Dear friends,
I almost can’t believe what I’m about to share with you, and I hope as you read this you’ll feel a deep sense of accomplishment for the way you have helped to usher in these world-changing milestones.
History is being made in the fight to protect children from porn and what’s happened in the past ten months represents more progress than has been made since the internet was invented.
Many of you will remember how, at the end of 2021, our team launched the Protect Children Not Porn campaign, calling for required ID-based age verification on porn sites. Most kids are being exposed to porn before their thirteenth birthday, and it’s hijacking many of their lives.
Porn exposure is a “gateway drug” for a host of destructive behaviors: porn addiction with escalating deviancy, depression and suicidal thoughts, becoming a victim or perpetrator of sexual abuse, and becoming a sex buyer of trafficked and exploited women and children.
Cutting off porn’s access to children is at the tip of the arrow for uprooting trafficking and sexual exploitation.
Through the Protect Children Not Porn campaign, we released a barrage of content exposing this crisis, including our documentary Raised on Porn, which just hit four million views. We co-hosted a screening and symposium in Washington, D.C. on Capitol Hill for members of Congress, and delivered our petition with 91,000 signatures to the speaker of the house.
And yet, after many months of relentless effort, we knew it was ultimately up to lawmakers to make this legislation a reality. We are thrilled to report that, at long last, the floodgates have burst open.
On January 1 of this year, Louisiana became the first state to pass required age verification on porn sites. In the months that followed, Utah, Arkansas, Mississippi, Virginia, Montana, North Carolina and Texas all passed age verification legislation!
In addition to these eight states that have passed age verification requirements, another 16 states have introduced bills pushing for it. What’s happening in this fight to protect children is unprecedented and we are quite literally watching history be written before our eyes.
I highly encourage you to watch this video we put together telling this inspiring story. It’s so important for us to take a minute to celebrate these monumental wins.
Beyond the Protect Children Not Porn campaign, we've made incredible traction this year in the fight to end trafficking and sexual exploitation, and we'll be sharing more of those exciting breakthroughs in additional emails over the next few weeks.
We’re a small team, but with you at our side, we’re impacting tens of millions of people with our films and campaigns—and it’s only possible because people like you are carrying this message of freedom with us, partnering in prayer, and financially supporting this work.
Together, we are shaping history and helping to create a world where every person can be free from trafficking and sexual exploitation.
We just launched our year-end fundraising campaign to raise critical funds to keep these campaigns and projects forging ahead in 2024. Will you consider helping us meet our year-end goal of $300K so we can create a world more free?
Let’s make history together!
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