Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, and David Brody, Christian Broadcasting Network’s Trump-infatuated chief political analyst, are concerned about increased traffic to porn websites during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
Adult entertainment site Pornhub has offered free premium memberships in response to the coronavirus pandemic. A blog post on the company’s website states: “[W]e’ve decided to play our part in encouraging everyone to stay home and are launching Free Premium worldwide until April 23.” During the pandemic, Pornhub has reported increased traffic to its website that the company says is correlated to the spread of coronavirus and the implementation of “quarantines, social distancing and work-at-home efforts encouraged or required by most states.”
But on Wednesday’s edition of “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins,” listeners were given grave warnings about the increase in Pornhub’s web traffic. Perkins said that the adult entertainment industry was aiming its efforts at vulnerable members of society and “literally preying upon these people” and that the offer of free premium content was “creating a lot of problems.”
“While they may be offering the service at no charge, it comes with a high price,” Perkins said.
Perkins and Brody alleged that the porn industry was also preying on children who have been spending more time at home due to coronavirus-related school closures. Brody repeated the warning of Donna Rice Hughes, an activist for internet safety and the elimination of pornography, who he said characterized the situation as a “pandemic inside a pandemic.”
“There’s this pandemic of child sexual exploitation on the internet that is getting even worse during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Brody said.
Rather than address parental oversight of what children access online, Perkins and Brody repeatedly wielded their concerns for children to attack the offer of free Pornhub memberships.
“This is a major, major issue, Tony,” Brody told Perkins.
Neither seemed to stop to consider that Pornhub is free to use by default and that its premium memberships simply provide users with access to ad-free, high speed, and higher definition content. Additionally, the internet is filled with effectively infinite amounts of instantly available pornography.
After a commercial break, Perkins continued the conversation with FRC’s vice president for policy and government affairs, Travis Weber, who said the premium porn was “dangerous stuff.”
“It’s harmful to human beings as individuals. It’s harmful to society. And this harmful stuff is now seeing an 18 percent jump on this site over normal numbers in connection with the recent dynamic and coronavirus—everyone is sitting around, and these pornography sites try to lure people and trap them into viewing this stuff while they’re sitting around,” Weber said.
