Mississippi Bills That Would Have Banned Online Porn Shot Down

JACKSON, Miss.—As news of the pandemic took over the headlines last month, the Mississippi House of Representatives quietly let die two long-shot companion bills that targeted online adult entertainment. Both Mississippi bills at hand, House Bill 1116 and HB 1120, would have relied on neighboring Southern states—Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and Oklahoma—to enter into an interstate compact for the purposes of banning online pornography and accompanying marketing campaigns on social media platforms. The bills, both shot down in House judiciary committees, would also have established a Southern states commission on “obscenities prohibition and prescribe its powers and duties.” Authored by Rep. Tracy Arnold, the now-dead HB 1116 and HB 1120 were designed to find “an area of moral decency” for the Internet. Arnold also is a senior pastor at the Vineyard Church in Booneville, Miss. Arnold envisioned the bills would necessitate a Commission of Southern States that would have been overseen by the governor of each state.   “The board would then go in and set guidelines on what constitutes as pornographic material,” Arnold told the local media when he created the pieces of legislation. “This isn’t an attempt to infringe on anyone’s rights; it’s to protect our children.” He added that mandatory filters would be a solution to restrict access for material on a web browser. A separate bill in Southern state Tennessee, called the Safer Internet for Minors Act still continues. It was deferred in a state Senate committee last month before its Legislature was suspended because of the pandemic. That piece of legislation, Senate Bill 2852, would block all porn sites unless a user chooses to opt in, similar to the now-scrapped policy effort in the U.K.