On a Colorado Christian organization’s online show, a noted anti-abortion activist spoke at length about a new legal strategy to chill LGBTQ-related speech in schools across the country.
“What if we gave parents the right to enforce the anti-grooming, the obscenity, the pornography legislation that’s currently on the books in most states, probably even Colorado?” asked Janet Folger Porter, founder of Faith2Action, on a June 19 episode of the Teller County-based Truth & Liberty Coalition’s online livecast.
Porter has a history of far-right, anti-LGBTQ activism going back decades. While she is best known for pioneering anti-abortion “heartbeat bills,” during the 1990s she helped lead a national advertising campaign which spent more than $400,000 promoting gay conversion therapy. Previously, Porter has argued that homosexuality directly caused the Biblical flood.
During her interview, Porter rattled off a laundry list of anti-LGBTQ grievances: “They’re starting more brushfires than we can put out. You’ve got the drag queen story hour at the county library, and the schools are grooming the young kids with the alphabet mafia. Then you’ve got the teenagers, who are being assigned pornography as part of their reading materials.”
Porter has enjoyed a long partnership with Truth & Liberty, which pushes a Christian nationalist agenda across the country. In Colorado this year, the group has backed a set of ballot initiatives aimed at restricting the rights of transgender youth.
In this case, their partnership seems to have included collaborating on Porter’s latest legislative project: instituting civil penalties for LGBTQ content in schools.
“The model of this bill says, if there is any kind of grooming – if there is any violation of your obscenity or pornography laws – the teachers and the librarians are no longer held exempt. And we give parents the right to sue,” Porter told Richard Harris, Truth & Liberty’s Executive Director.
Porter’s latest project, titled “The Child Protection Bill,” attempts to capitalize on the success of the legislative mechanism made infamous by Texas’ 2021 heartbeat bill, which bans abortion after six weeks – before many women are aware of their pregnancy. Unlike other abortion bans, the Texas law enables private citizens to sue abortion providers, as well as anyone else who helps a woman obtain an abortion. Reproductive health advocates have criticized the law as effectively “[placing] a bounty on people who provide or aid abortions, inviting random strangers to sue them.”
According to Porter, the bill is being distributed with the help of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers (NACL). Headed by former Arkansas state senator Jason Rapert, who is an avowed Christian nationalist, NACL previously turned the Texas heartbeat bill into model legislation, and was responsible for spreading it into more than a dozen states.
“It turns out that the NACL is set up for such a time as this that you can actually introduce a bill. And unlike with a heartbeat bill, instead of waiting ten years to get ten heartbeat bills through, we can multiply and say, hey everybody, here’s a model,” Porter explained to Harris.
During the interview, Porter thanked Harris and Truth & Liberty, among others, for contributing to the final version of the model bill – which she said is already being circulated through multiple conservative states’ legislatures.
“It’s now been presented in Louisiana as an idea for consideration, as well as in Texas and in Arkansas, where we believe this draft is going to happen,” Porter said. “And I want to say personally, thank you for your input. Not only did your input get submitted with the model bill, but also that of Walter Weber of the American Center for Law and Justice and Andy Schlafly.”
None of the three mentioned states’ legislatures are currently in session. The Colorado Times Recorder was unable to locate a version of “The Child Protection Bill” that has been officially filed. Faith2Action did not respond to an emailed request for the text of the model bill.
The intent of the bill stretches the definition of obscenity to include any and all discussion of LGBTQ-related concepts and themes. It’s unclear how well that claim would hold up in court. In the 1973 Miller v. California ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court outlined what would become known as the “Miller Test” for determining whether expression constitutes obscenity. Notably, one factor in the Miller Test is that, to be considered obscene, a work must “lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”
Porter indicated that schools and teachers who fail to release their entire curriculum to parents ahead of time could risk civil lawsuits, even if that curriculum does not actually contain objectionable material: “If you don’t release what curriculum you’re teaching your children, if you don’t show them the assignments, the handouts, all the reading suggested reading materials, then guess what? You could be subject to a lawsuit. So it’s the teachers who better, they better abide by this law, or they’re going to find themselves in a lawsuit themselves.”
Porter also touted another potential application of the bill: outlawing discussion of abortion and reproductive health in schools.
“If you bring in Planned Parenthood to tell everybody how great abortion is or how wonderful it is to engage in premarital sex, well guess what? That’s also grooming,” Porter said. “And that will also be, you’ll be accountable for that.”
She went on to express an interest in using the same methodology to further other conservative culture war grievances, such as banning discussion of climate change in schools.
“And, you know, as you’re talking, I’m like, you know, I’d kind of like to add this whole climate change agenda in there, too,” said Porter. “But first things first. Let’s get the grooming stopped, and we’ll go from there.”
