Southern Baptists have repeatedly called for rigorous legislation to protect children from pornography. For decades, the Southern Baptist Convention has opposed the pornography industry in all its forms, recognizing its destructive effects on families and children as well as its abhorrent connections to human trafficking. In 2025, Southern Baptists passed a resolution urging “the United States Congress and state legislatures . . . to provide rigorous enforcement mechanisms—including age-verification and civil liability—in the ultimate effort to eradicate pornography nationwide.”
Pornography is severely and particularly harmful to children. Countless studies have proven that exposure to pornography is greatly detrimental to minors both in the short term and long term. The effects of pornography on youth include addiction, depression, anxiety, problematic sexualized behaviors (PBS), impaired academic performance, and the strengthening of an attitude supportive of sexual violence.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, the use of age verification technology to protect minors from pornography is definitively constitutional. The Supreme Court decided that a Texas law which required age-verification technology to access pornographic material online did not violate the First Amendment. The SCREEN Act proposes similar policies to achieve the same result, and as such, should pass constitutional muster in the courts.
The ERLC strongly supports the SCREEN Act. In recognizing pornography as a public health hazard and requiring age verification to access obscene material, the SCREEN Act would implement measures to shield our nation’s children from obscene and harmful material. Comparable policies have been used for decades in brick-and-mortar stores, and it is long past time to extend that same common sense to the internet. We urge Congress to enshrine protections for children in federal law by passing the SCREEN Act. For more on policies that promote the biblical institutions of marriage and family, visit erlc.com/policy/marriage-and-family/.
