Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) isn’t mincing words in his repudiation of the proliferation of pornography.
A recent survey found a majority of men (57%) ages 30 to 49 years old have watched pornography in the last month, while 42% said they had watched it in the last week. There’s no doubt porn consumption is a scourge of American culture, particularly among young men.
During Turning Point USA’s America Fest over the weekend, Hawley delivered a blunt but impactful message to guys spending time watching pornography.
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“Young men, let me make a suggestion to you,” he said in a clip recently shared to his Twitter account. “Why don’t you turn off the computer and log off the porn and go ask a real woman on a date. How about that? It’s just a thought.”
“Ask her out,” the senator said again. “Young men, why don’t you be the ones to do the asking? How about that? Don’t wait for her; you go ask. Show her a little respect. And then you take her out and you treat her right. How about that? Don’t make her cater to your whims. Treat her right; treat her like what she is, a woman, a person of incredible significance created in the image of God.”
The clip of Hawley circulated on Twitter Sunday, with some users making fun of the lawmaker for his comments. But he stood by them, responding, “Yes. I did. And I’m right,” to a person who shared the video of him, writing, “Hawley tells young men to turn off the porn and go ask a real woman out on a date.”
Yes. I did. And I’m right. https://t.co/9rW4vxha9L
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) December 19, 2022
This is not the first time Hawley has spoken out against pornography.
In November 2021, during an interview with Axios, Hawley said it’s incumbent upon conservatives to “call men back to responsibility.”
“We’ve got to say that spending your time not working … spending your time on video games, spending your time watching porn online while doing nothing is not good for you, your family, or this country,” he said.
And in March of this year, Hawley intensely questioned then-Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her Senate confirmation hearing for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.
His questions to the since-confirmed justice centered on her handling of criminal cases involving child sexual abuse material, more colloquially known as child pornography.
During her tenure on the bench, Jackson had a penchant for granting sex offenders lesser sentences than recommended by federal guidelines for such cases, according to The Hill. The senator focused specifically on one case, United States v. Hawkins, in which Jackson sentenced the defendant to just three months in prison, well below the government’s recommended two-year sentence and much more lenient than the federal advisory guideline of a minimum of eight years behind bars.
Hawley zeroed in on Jackson’s claim during sentencing that it would not be appropriate to increase the defendant’s sentence based on the number of illegal CSAM images involved in his case. Quoting the judge, Hawley questioned why a greater sentence wouldn’t be proper because “these circumstances exist in many cases, if not most, and don’t signal an especially heinous or egregious child pornography offense.”
“I just want to ask you about that, because, I just have to tell you, I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it,” said the senator. “We’re talking about 8-year-olds and 9-year-olds and 11-year-olds and 12-year-olds. He’s got images of these the government said added up to over 600 images, gobs of video footage of these children, but you say this does not signal a heinous or egregious child pornography offense.”
“What word would you use if it’s not heinous or egregious?” he asked.
Jackson acknowledged she did find the contents of the case both “heinous” and “egregious,” but explained a judge in her position has to determine “how to sentence defendants proportionately consistent” with the law and the requirements of Congress.
It is worth noting, though, that, in Hawley’s view, Jackson wasn’t considering congressional recommendations at all in her three-month sentencing of the defendant in question.
He then pivoted to the justice’s explanation for the defendant’s light sentence.
“You said, ‘You were viewing’ — this was you to the defendant — ‘you were viewing sex acts between children who were not much younger than you’ and this whole discussion is about why you’re only giving him three months,” Hawley said.
He continued, “Judge, he was 18. These kids are eight. I don’t see [in] what sense they’re peers. I’ve got a 9-year-old, a 7-year-old, and a 16-month-old at home, and I live in fear that they will be exposed to — let alone exploited in — this kind of material. I don’t understand you saying to him that they’re peers and, therefore, you were viewing sex acts between children who were ‘not much younger than you’ and that that’s somehow a reason to only give him three months.”
Jackson argued the defendant had just graduated high school and that “some of, perhaps not all” of the illicit material in his possession involved “older teenagers.”
Neither Hawley nor Jackson came to any sort of agreement on the subject.
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