It looks like the War on Porn is finally heating up. 

On Thursday, a new law took effect in Utah, requiring stricter age-verification standards on “adult websites.” That seems reasonable, doesn’t it? These sites are full of adult films showing adult performers in adult situations. It’s not for kids.

And the adult film industry wholeheartedly agrees. Really, they do! That’s actually why they’re opposed to stricter age-verification laws.

So says Cherie DeVille, adult film star and part-time spokestrumpet for PornHub. Days before the Utah’s new law took effect, anyone visiting the site from the Beehive State was greeted with a video of Ms. DeVille, fully-clothed, explaining why the laws were a bad idea: 

Giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk … . Mandating age verification without proper enforcement gives platforms the opportunity to choose whether or not to comply. As we've seen in other states, this just drives traffic to sites with far fewer safety measures in place.

To be clear, by “safety measures,” PornHub doesn’t mean “blocking children from looking at their porn.” They don’t care about that. 

According to the site’s terms of service, “By accessing, using or visiting [PornHub]… you signify your agreement to these Terms of Service and our Privacy Policy and incorporated herein by reference.” And by accepting to the terms of service, “You affirm that you are at least 18 years of age or the age of majority in the jurisdiction you are accessing the Website from,” etc.

In other words, if you go on PornHub, they consider that proof of the fact that you’re 18 or older. After all, it’s an adult website. What possible interest could it hold for teenagers?

No. When Ms. DeVille brags about the site’s “safety measures,” she’s talking about PornHub’s commitment to keeping its site free of illegal pornography: child porn, rape porn, revenge porn, etc.

It’s probably true that PornHub, as a titan of the adult-film industry, has better censors than most of its competitors.  But think about what Ms. DeVille is actually saying. 

Your kids are going to watch porn one way or the other. The difference between PornHub and those other sites is that we have the resources to filter out the really bad stuff. Sure, our site could destroy your son’s ability to form healthy relationships with women by making him incapable of achieving sexual satisfaction without fantasizing about choking Asian shemales. But he probably won’t want to rape children. And, these days, that’s really the best you can hope for.

Honestly, that’s not the worst argument. No law can actually prevent your children from watching porn. It can only make it harder for them to access the big-named sites—which, again, do tend to have better censors. 

Also, there’s tons of “adult” content on non-“adult” sites. Remember when Ted Cruz’s official Twitter liked a two-minute clip of hardcore porn? Once he got the itch, after a long night of searching his own name, Texas Ted didn’t even have to switch apps. 

Who knows? As porn becomes more socially acceptable, sites like PornHub may become redundant. Social-media giants might try to (officially) capture some of that $97 billion market. It’s really not hard to imagine OnlyFans being integrated into the Facebook empire, or Twitter giving a red checkmark to accounts that purvey smut.

Yet, just because it’s inevitable, that doesn’t mean we should sit back and do nothing. There are now mountains of evidence attesting to the damage that porn does to individuals, to families, and to society. Utah is right: this is a public health crisis. And it’s only getting worse. 

So, while I’m all in favor of banning porn, that shouldn’t be a parents’ first concern. This is the question we should be asking: “What can I do—as a Dad, as a Mom—to keep my kids safe from porn?”

Now, there’s only one surefire way to be sure your kids never look at internet porn, and that’s to become Amish. If you have no prior religious commitments, that might actually be a good option.

For the rest of us, there’s really only one choice. Don’t let your kids have unfettered access to the internet—and make sure their friends don't, either.

I know that’s a tall order. It will probably require relocating to a Benedict Option–type community. And that might be more than most parents are willing to undertake.

Yet imagine if we were talking about any other pandemic. The opioid, for instance. “I know fentanyl is bad for you. Still, I don’t want Kendall to be unpopular. Sure, two hundred thousand deaths per year is a lot. Then again, moving is such a hassle. And maybe her friends are popping pills or whatever. But is it really fair to uproot her life like that?”

Obviously, fentanyl is more dangerous than porn. But porn is also vastly more pervasive than opioids. And—per those mountains of evidence—there’s a very good chance that it could ruin your child’s life. According to recent studies, 65 percent of young men use porn once a week, while 92 percent of children are exposed to porn before the age of 18. Upwards of 6 percent of adults self-identify as porn addicts, though the true rate is probably much higher. (Really, you can’t tell if you’re a full-blown porn addict until you try to stop—and can’t.)

Researchers have shown a direct correlation between porn use and incidents of sexual disorders such as erectile dysfunction. A survey of matrimonial lawyers also found that sixty percent of divorce cases include complaints of porn addiction, making it the most common cause for marriage failure by far. 

Even if your kids somehow manage to avoid the stuff on their own, growing up surrounded by porn users can be dangerous. There’s also a direct correlation between viewing pornography and violent, unwanted sexual activity, even among middle-schoolers. 

Not to be too graphic, but it’s entirely possible that your twelve-year-old daughter will kiss a boy in her class, and he’ll take that as a cue to grope, strangle, bite, or even penetrate her. In every other respect, he might be the nicest kid in school. Yet that’s how it works in the “adult” films. Cram all of those lessons into the brain of a pubescent boy, with its natural stupidity and hypersexuality, and you’ve got a ticking time-bomb of sexual assault.

That’s not to say there isn’t sexual abuse in close-knit, socially conservative communities. Of course there is. But, as anyone who’s lived in one will attest, it’s a much healthier and safer environment for raising children. One of the first things that struck me was that boys and girls were able to be friends from early childhood through college without ever becoming awkward around each other. They didn’t have access to porn, and so they weren’t trained to see the other only as sexual objects. 

Even when they started dating, messy breakups are rare, because premarital sex is rare. Couples don’t form the deeper emotional bonds that come only from sexual intimacy—not until they’ve gotten married or (for those who slip up) are planning to do so. That may seem inconceivable, but it’s true. When you grow up without porn, you’ll find it much easier to resist sexual urges for the rest of your life. 

Men can appreciate what a handy skill that would be. Women can appreciate the advantages of growing up with boys who have a high level of sexual self-discipline.

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This is hard to describe if you’ve never seen it first-hand. But once you have, you can’t un-see it. You can’t help but think, “Yes. This is what childhood is supposed to be like. This is what dating is supposed to be like. This is what marriage is supposed to be like.”

There are lots of other good reasons to join a BenOp community. This, however, is one of the very best. Statistically, if anything is going to ruin your child’s life, it will probably be porn. Allowing them to grow up in a virtually porn-free environment is one of the best gifts you, as a parent, can give them. 

Yes, it will take a huge amount of sacrifice on your part. Yet that’s what being a parent is all about. You would die to protect your children, but will you live for them?