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>> Walker Wildmon: We inform religious freedom is about people of faith being able to live out their faith, live out their convictions no matter where they are. We equip sacred honor is the courage to speak truth to live out your free speech. We also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character.
>> Jeff Chamblee: This is at The Core on American Family Radio.
The show's hosted each week by myself and Rick Green
>> Walker Wildmon: Welcome to The Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us on this edition of the program. Brand new edition, brand new week here on American Family Radio. The show's hosted each week by myself and Rick Green. We're your host each week. I'm with you on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Rick's with you on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And Rick and I go back, a decade plus and, I'm an alumni of Patriot Academy, which Rick is a founder of. That's where he and I crossed paths. And, he and my dad go back further with David Barton and Wall Builders, which has aired on American Family Radio for some time now. So it's a joy to co host the show with Rick each week.
The priority of spiritual wealth over monetary wealth is abundantly clear in scripture
Proverbs chapter 19 is where we are this week. Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than he who is perverse in speech and is a fool. Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than he who is perverse in speech and is a fool. Well, there you have it. The priority of spiritual wealth over monetary wealth is abundantly clear in scripture. And more specifically, the scripture makes it clear that we should not let wealth, material or financial wealth compromise our character toward God and in this case, our integrity. It is not that money in and of itself or wealth in and of itself is sinful or evil. But the scripture talks about the love thereof or the love of money.
>> Walker Wildmon: Can be, the root of all evil or is the root of all evil. So, money is a tool that God gives us, to be good stewards over and, to use wisely for his purposes, because it's all under his creation and under his authority. But, Proverbs 19's warning here that it's better for a man to be poor and have integrity than to the contrary, be rich, lack integrity. That's Proverbs chapter 19, verse one. let's talk about a couple stories this segment, and then we do have guests in the second and the third. We'll have Tammy Fitzgerald on with us here in a few minutes from North Carolina Values Coalition. obviously, North Carolina Values has been around for a long time and we've done a lot of great work with them. So we'll talk about some items going on in North Carolina and then we'll talk to Louisiana Rep. Laurie Schlegel in the last segment on some of the age verification legislation that the representative has helped pass in Louisiana.
American Family News has a piece on the declining fertility rate in America
The article, that I want to talk about, this segment, we'll talk about a couple stories, but the first one is from American. Both of these are from American Family News. Chris, put this one out. Chris is on with us each Friday. Chris Woodward, But American, Family News has written a pretty extensive piece on the declining fertility rate, which I don't think this gives enough attention. maybe it's because a lot of the media outlets are secular in nature and they don't think biblically, they don't think spiritually. But as I've said countless times, the data here is pretty alarming. It's pretty alarming, for anyone who cares about the next 5, 10, 20 years of our country, which I know the number of people that care about that is probably, probably small, but I do and you should too. The fertility rate in the US has dropped to an all time low in 2024, with, women having less than 1.6 children. Obviously you can't have 0.6 of a child. You either have a child or you don't. But this is looking at the rate, the rate of children, per, woman in America. And right now that number is 1.6. So basically what it says is that people on average are having less than two children. Less than two children. Well, anybody who knows simple math understands that that's not replacement levels. All right? Three are technically over two for an average, for a rate over 2.1. Over two is replacement levels, which means that your average couple is having, three or more children to be at replacement levels. Well, that's not happening. And it hasn't been happening for some time now. We've been at 2 or below 2 since the 70s. And every single time I mention that statistic, people undoubtedly go, there's no way. That's true, there's no way. And I say, go look at the data. Go look at the US Census Bureau data going back to the 70s, and what you will find is that we have been at or below 2% since the 70s, and it actually started in the mid-60s. But let's just say the 70s, this is a problem for multiple reasons. And yes, it is indicative of our spiritual state in America, because what it means, if you extrapolate it and apply it to everyday life, what it means is that, over time, people have become specifically married couples have become more and more disinterested in childbearing, in being fruitful and multiplying. That's the spiritual biblical dynamic at play. And we can see that with the, you can see the cultural decay over the last 50 years and pair with that, the decline in fertility rate goes hand in hand. the further kind of implications of this, beyond just the spiritual nature of it and where people's values lie is the sheer population number. For any society, any culture, to sustain itself, you've got to replace yourself, you've got to replace the society with people, with humans, to continue on the society, the country, the culture, etc. And so when people talk about how American civilization is literally at stake with this population decline, which has now become a collapse, that's not an exaggeration. All right, it's not an exaggeration. And there's only one way to counter this and maintain population levels domestically, and that is immigration. So you say. I, I wonder why the Democrats and the Marxists have been so obsessed with this mass illegal immigration. Well, how do you supplement the rapid population decline in America, without going through the laborious, strenuous, lengthy immigration process that we have in America that's honestly over complicated, but very generous. over a million legal immigrants a year. How do you bypass that and plug the hole in the boat, if you will, of the rapid population decline domestically? Well, it's called illegal immigration. BIDEN Let in 10 million in four years. And what I believe this is an effort, and this is probably one aspect of a much Larger plan. But I believe, I believe that the Democrats, one of the reasons, and the major business leaders are in favor of this too. I think one of the major kind of incentives for the mass immigration, although it be illegal, is, is to backfill this rapid population decline to where we don't really recognize it. Because I'll just tell you this, if our, if we did not have the problem of illegal immigration, then what I'm talking about, about being below replacement levels since the 70s, that would have, that this would have been a, an existential threat that would have been identified by the government and others and would have been talked about for decades leading up to this. Because of the ramifications here, you can't continue growth of a nation without humans. And I think we haven't seen some of the serious side effects of, of this decline to the extent that they would have already come had it not been for this surge of illegal immigration. I think they've been backfilling illegal immigrants into our country to fill jobs, to kind of stabilize the economy and the system, if you will. To where we look around and we think there's nothing wrong. Right. You know, if I want to have one kid or no kids, it doesn't really matter. Right. I mean clearly everything's still going great around here. And so what this is when people talk about the Great Replacement Theory, which gets, it get this gets couched or this gets you know, positioned as a grand conspiracy that only Alex Jones believes in. But the Great Replacement Theory is not a theory. This is happening. This has happened. As a matter of fact, this isn't, isn't happening. It's both, it's happening now and it has happened in the past. Americans, native born Americans are being replaced by foreigners. That's a fact. Look at the sheer numbers. You cannot have population growth when you're, when you're having a 1.6% birth rate unless you're surging in millions of illegal immigrants. And so population replacement or. The Great Replacement Theory is not a theory anymore. It's in reality, it's here. It's happening. We've allowed tens of millions of foreigners into our country. These are foreign born people, not American citizens, not born in America. Very little concept of American culture and American ideals. And I think this plays in to the downfall of America as we know it. And here's what I want people to understand when we talk about the downfall of America. It doesn't have to be this, like a movie. This, you know, this movie where, you know, there's civil War in the streets and, and it's apocalyptic. And you know, we've seen all the movies, right, about internal conflict, civil war, etc. That's not the downfall of America that we're talking about here. What we're talking about is an America that becomes unrecognizable to the america of maybe 40 years ago or 80 years ago. And if you want to know what this looks like maybe 10 years down the road, go to Europe, go to Europe or go to Minnesota, go to Minnesota. Go to places where large amounts of foreigners, foreign born individuals have been surged in and replaced American culture. And the net effect here is that when you bring in people who have no lineal or, lineage and blood connection to the society, to the country, to the culture, it makes it much, much harder to preserve it. And so the reason I think that the Democrats have a vested interest in continuing this great replacement strategy is because the Democrats, the last thing they want from a voting block is native born Americans that have not only a blood connection to the country, but also have some kind of understanding of our revolutionary war, how we got to where we are today, the bell of rights, America's founding fathers, individual liberty, capitalism, God given rights, all of these ideals and truths that get passed on from generation to generation. The Democrats don't have to deal with that if they simply replace the population with foreigners who have no connection to the ideals I'm talking about.
>> Jeff Chamblee: At The Core podcast are [email protected] now back to At The Core on American Family Radio.
American Family Radio welcomes Tami Fitzgerald to the show today
>> Walker Wildmon: Welcome, back to this second segment of the show. Today you're listening to American Family Radio. The show is at The Core and we would love for you to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. We've also got the video up on Facebook at The Core on X, American Family Radio's page on X and then over@stream afa.net well, I want to welcome a guest, to the program and a friend of the ministry that we've been working with for a long time now. And that's Tammy Fitzgerald, executive director of NC Values Coalition or North Carolina Values Coalition. Tammy's with us now. Hey Tammy, welcome back to the program.
>> Tami Fitzgerald: Thank you, Walker. It's so nice to be here with you today.
>> Walker Wildmon: Absolutely. Well Tammy, we try to highlight what's going on at the state level around the country, every so often here on the program because that's where a lot of the, of the movement, if you will, in the evangelical world and the conservative world takes places at the State level. And your organization's been leading the charge on pro family values in North Carolina for a long time now.
Walker is working on House Bill 805 that the governor has vetoed
this, this session though, you've been working on what's known as House Bill 805 that, the governor has vetoed, that you're trying to get overridden. that has a lot of. It's a big, big package, big bill, but it has some very important items in it. So tell us about this House Bill H805.
>> Tami Fitzgerald: Well, thank you for the opportunity to talk about it, Walker. And, that we call this the big beautiful bill, North Carolina style. it started as five different bills. And, four of the bills passed the House and one passed the Senate. And, when the bills crossed over to the Senate, the Senate just put everything in one big beautiful bill. So, the base bill is House Bill 805, and it really is an anti pornography bill. the bill basically requires that anyone appearing on a porn site must have consented and must be above the age of 18. Of course, this would hit at trafficking victims, who are often featured on porn sites. So that bill was so popular in the House that all the Democrats voted for it and probably is why it got loaded up in the Senate with other pro family issues that, that we have been, behind, primarily, defining sex according to biology, like President Trump did in one of his very first executive orders called Defending women from Gender Ideology Extremism. And so this just defines male, female and man, woman and sex according to biology. That seems pretty common sense. Another, thing it does is it protects North Carolina girls in private spaces, like sleeping quarters on overnight field trips for K12 students. And unfortunately, we have some school systems in North Carolina that allow this. So that's part of the bill. we also have a section in the bill that will prohibit, lying about your sex on birth certificate. So if someone decides they want to change the sex on their birth certificate, this bill would require the recorder of deeds to record the old and new birth certificates together so that the truth is reflected in the public records. It also has a section that deals with, sex transitioning procedures. This would allow victims of sex transitioning procedures to sue their doctors for up to 10 years. And it would also prohibit, sex transition procedures being paid for by state money for prison inmates. And, finally, the bill has a section that will deal with obscene books in schools. It allows parents to opt out of curriculum that violates their religious beliefs and also requires the schools to publish all the book titles in their library. And allows the parents to, to notify the librarian that their children cannot check out certain books. So it is a big beautiful bill, but there are lots of great provisions in this bill.
>> Walker Wildmon: Walker. Well, what it sounds like Tammy, is that you guys have gone on all in here and I love that, I love that you guys are like, hey, if we're going to do it, we're going to go all in and not hold back anything. So this is a powerful piece of legislation in North Carolina.
North Carolina's House and Senate have lined up an override of Governor's veto
Tell us what the makeup is on the, on the legislative side, meaning the House and the Senate. Because you've got the governor vetoing this bill, you guys have lined up an override. What's your, what's your breakdown Republican versus Democrat there?
>> Tami Fitzgerald: Well, it's very tight and we're actually absent the ability to override a veto with just Republicans. We need one House Democrat to vote with Republicans if everyone is present and voting. If, there were a couple of Democrats absent then we would have enough votes. We, we need 72 votes in the House and we have 71 Republicans. The Senate has a bare super majority of 30 members. And so if the House is able to override the veto, then the Senate will take it up and I'm sure they'll be able to do it.
>> Walker Wildmon: Gotcha. Gotcha. And that's, that's ah, for, for folks listening in North Carolina, which we have multiple stations there, what can they do if they call their lawmaker in North Carolina? What should they say?
>> Tami Fitzgerald: They should ask their lawmaker to override the veto of House Bill 805 to vote for women to vote for children by overriding the veto.
>> Walker Wildmon: Excellent, excellent. Well there you have it folks. Tammy, tell our folks your website where they can go read more information about this piece of legislation and all the things that you guys do it over at NC values.
>> Tami Fitzgerald: Well you can go to ncvalues.org and if you type in slash, woman will take to our action page on this particular bill and you can send an email to your legislator through our site. It's ncvalues.org woman and that will enable you to directly communicate with your legislator. But if you just want to see what's on our website, of course it's NCvalues.org and we'd love to have people check us out there.
>> Walker Wildmon: Excellent. The name of the legislation is Prevent Sexual Exploitation of Women and Minors act, House Bill 8005 for those in North Carolina. And as Tammy said, NC values.org woman will take you straight to the page on this specific issue where, you can contact your lawmaker in the state. Hey Tammy, thanks so much for your work and for highlighting what you guys are doing there.
>> Tami Fitzgerald: Thank you so much, Walker. And I hope people will call their legislators and demand they pass this legislation into law.
>> Walker Wildmon: Absolutely. Thanks Tammy. Appreciate it.
>> Tami Fitzgerald: Thank you.
>> Walker Wildmon: All right, absolutely. There you have it. Ncvalues.org woman and because we do know what a woman is and Tammy, ah, and her team are doing a great job there at North Carolina Values Coalition. NCvalues.org and ah, Lord willing, over the next few days that veto will be overridd in the state of North Carolina. That's a big deal, folks. I just want you to understand overriding a veto even at the state level is a very, very big deal. So for Tammy and her team to get this thing over the finish line, it's a huge victory. And as you mentioned, this is not a fringe bill. This isn't a bill that is bundled in with, you know, 30 other topics and some good, some bad. This is just a heavy hitting piece of legislation, House Bill 805 in the state of North Carolina.
The first challenge is the aging of our electrical grid
Well, another topic I want to get to this segment while we have some time left is the topic of artificial intelligence. I've been, I've been talking about this on and off recently, but this is a, ah, big topic. The Trump administration is heavily focused on artificial intelligence. And there's two challenges that I see us facing, our country facing related to artificial intelligence over the next, let's say three to five years. The first challenge is the aging of our electrical grid. Everybody you talk to that is in the AI world, and if you listen to their testimonies with Congress and elsewhere, there's a major power need, electricity need in the US to, in order for the US to become dominant in artificial intelligence. The problem, the reason that that's a problem is because we've been told for the last 30 years that fossil fuels are bad and that we don't need to continue producing, quote, dirty energy. And instead we've gone to these less efficient means of power, which are solar and wind. And so here we are with very old and dilapidated infrastructure when it relates to our power grid. And what is the one thing that AI must have to function? Power. And so, Bobby, I want to get your thoughts on this because you look at, the electric grid as we know it today, it's a very old system. It's a very kind of antiquated system. It works great, brilliant invention. But just the rudimentary nature of our electric grid, meaning power poles, transmission lines, transformers, I mean it's a pretty basic setup. Where are we going to get all this power from? Because when you look at the amount of power that's needed just for one data center, you're talking about enough power to run like a whole city of 100,000 people just for one data center. We don't have power just sitting around that we can pull out of thin air.
>> Bobby Roza: Yeah. And like we've discussed on other shows here recently, I think the small compact mini, reactors, if you will.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yes.
>> Bobby Roza: Pardon me. I think that's, that's going to be our go to. My understanding is that they're fairly easy to build, get them online fairly quickly. Things of that nature.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yes.
>> Bobby Roza: And it won't be just along the lines of data mining and things that nature which require huge amounts, of energy. I think you'll see them more populated in communities and things of that nature where, they are safe. The technology on nuclear energy is nothing like it used to be in Three Mile island that most people, of my age anyway still remember.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah.
>> Bobby Roza: so, ah, yeah, there was relief. There's light at the end of the tunnel and I think it'll be here fairly quickly.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah. To your point, I do agree that is the solution because when you listen to people who are experts on small modular reactors, it's a no brainer when you look at what it can power, how small of a footprint it has, and how self sufficient it is. Meaning that. And you can basically further segregate the grid and shield against mass outages.
>> Walker Wildmon: Exactly.
>> Walker Wildmon: but that's going to take the government. The government is going to have to streamline, streamline the approval process here because Biden was holding that.
>> Bobby Roza: Yes. And I don't, I don't foresee that being an obstacle because again, Trump is very bitcoin oriented.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yes.
>> Bobby Roza: He knows what it requires in terms of energy. So he'll be, he'll be really flexible in that in that regard, I believe. The other thing, the other point I think is important as they're building these mini reactors around the country and so forth. That will also buy time for the grid to be updated in a major way. Not just band aids and you know, rubber bands, kind of fixes that they've been using over the last number of years.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah, yeah. They're going to have to invest in the grid and, and this is coming on the heels of $37 trillion in debt and this is a problem with the debt. I mean, when you have the debt levels, we do, it doesn't leave a lot of room for investment in infrastructure, because the investment in infrastructure, the return on investment comes down the road, pretty far down the road. now with AI, it's going to come pretty rapidly, the return on investment, just because this is going to be a multitrillion dollar industry, around the world. So America has to be the leader on this. There's no question about it. I know there's a lot of questions still up in the air on the whole moral aspect of this artificial intelligence topic. But if America's not in the driver's seat, folks, who is? Who's going to be in the driver's seat? I don't want Communist China in the driver's seat. I don't want Russia in the driver's seat. I, don't want any, I don't want India in the driver's seat. America, is the best shot at producing AI and doing so humanely, morally and with some type of ethical boundaries. and so this is why America's got to be out front on this. So I agree. I think the small modular reactors, it's a fascinating technology. I think that's the way to go. But it's going to have to be developed very, very quickly because right now the current data centers are just munching off of the traditional grid, whether it's coal, natural gas, etc. And you can't do that for an extended amount of time without basically eating up all of your capacity on the grid. The other thing that I think is going to be a challenge is the, the moral element here. M and I, I know we need to be careful adding in more government regulations and bureaucracy and stuff when you're talking about a booming industry like AI, because there's nothing that's going to slow this down until you add government regulations and then that will slow this, this renaissance down drastically, which isn't good. But this is, this is kind of the wild, wild west of the technological revolution. And as I've said before, artificial intelligence folks, I would just encourage you to read up on it. You need to read up. Listen up. Watch. You know, experts in this space, this is, this is pretty intimidating. This is pretty intimidating. The level of knowledge that these supercomputers can, can obtain through. They're, they're, they're basically bundling together human knowledge, mass amounts of human produced knowledge into one database, if you will. And then it can, it can, it can score like for example, on ACT test it can score 36. It can score 36 nearly every time. I'm talking about the AI computer and you look at, you know, the hypotheticals of, of an AI machine getting kind of on the loose right outside of human control, or even AI being able to hide things from humans which they're talking about. They're talking about cases of this now of where they're querying AI. They know it's there, but AI is intentionally hiding it from humans. That's some pretty intimidating stuff, Sci fi level stuff that Christians need to be studied up on. We'll be back.
>> Jeff Chamblee: This is at The Core on American Family Radio with your host, Walker Wildmon.
American Family Radio welcomes LA Representative Laurie Schlegel on today's program
>> Walker Wildmon: Welcome back to the program here on American Family Radio. Walker Wildmon here with you on this last segment of today's program. We've had Tammy Fitzgerald with us in the last segment from North Carolina Values, talking about her work in the state legislature on some great legislation, House Bill 805 there. And I want to bring back a guest on the program that we've had before, Representative Laurie Schlegel out of Louisiana. And ah, Laurie's been part of critical legislation, pro family legislation in the legislature there in Louisiana for several years now. And she's with us now. Representative Slago, welcome back to the program.
>> Representative Laurie Schlegel: Thank you for having me, Walker.
>> Walker Wildmon: Well, we covered, and here on AFR, we covered the not only the 5th Circuit ruling on the topic of age verification for pornographic websites. that was a while back. But the Supreme Court, recently at the end of their June term ruled on a Texas law that dealt with a very similar topic, almost exact topic and that is age verification for visitors of these pornographic websites. And over nearly 20 states have passed this type of legislation. But the reason we have you on is because Louisiana was one of the first to lead on this issue and, and the Supreme Court upheld the Texas standard, which is a mirror image of what you guys did in Louisiana. Tell us, give us a little background or take us back to the passing of this legislation. And then here we are now, with it being upheld at the Supreme Court.
>> Representative Laurie Schlegel: Sure. So I got elected in a special election in 2021. I'm a counselor. I'm also a certified sex addiction therapist. So it's obviously what I do professionally, but I didn't have any plans to go out right out of the gate and pass something like this. but I came across a Billie Eilish interview with Howard Stern and she was just sharing as a young lady, she started watching porn at age 11 and it just destroyed her relationship in her brain. And I just said, I need to look at this. And so it just so happened to be, at the time we were coming out of COVID our court system was using our, digitalized ID to verify people's identity when they were coming to do virtual court. And so I got with LA Wallet and I asked them, hey, is it, is it technologically available that we could protect someone's privacy, give someone's course, age? and you know, obviously my biggest thing was I wanted to make sure the technology was available, that I could protect people's privacy if I was going to do this. And it was resounding, yes. so I then I knew I needed to pass a law that was going to pass constitutional muster considering some of the past Supreme Court precedent. So I just so happen to have a friend who's a First Amendment lawyer. and we looked at the, Supreme Court precedent, we, we drafted m. The law which I felt was going to pass constitutional muster. We educated our body on what our kids are actually seeing very easily online in two clicks, and how harmful it is. And we passed, almost unanimously. One person did vote no. They said it wasn't going to be constitutional, which I argued that I think it had a path. And, Free Speech Coalition versus Paxton proved, that we were right that age verification, could pass constitutional muster and we could protect kids online.
Louisiana's age verification law was upheld at the Supreme Court this week
>> Walker Wildmon: Laurie, this once, again, we're talking to Representative Laurie Schlegel out of Louisiana. She represents House District 82 and was critical, proponent behind this original bill in Louisiana that's now, been upheld at the Supreme Court, by virtue of the Texas bill that, was signed into law. did you ever see this coming? Meaning, like when you were going through the process you just talked about and calling people and lawyers and saying, hey, can we do this constitutionally, et cetera. Did you ever think that the topic would be at the Supreme Court? Just handful of years later, I will.
>> Representative Laurie Schlegel: Say I was hoping, it was going to be at the Supreme Court. I knew we were going to get sued because that's what the porn industry and big tech really do when it comes to child protective bills is that they, they do try, they don't want to be regulated. And so I knew we were going to be sued. So I knew we would have to pass a law that would pass constitutional muster. Now, I didn't know it was going to be this soon. in terms of getting to the Supreme Court, and I think that's a testament to. So we passed our law and then Mississippi, Utah passed it very shortly after and Texas, and then the porn industry came and sued all of our states. Texas's case made it to the Supreme Court first. But how quickly. So I passed this in 2022. It was enacted because I gave them six months time by the time I passed it to when it was enacted for them to be able to put age verification into place. And so it was 1-1-2023 that Pornhub complied in our state and that's when it took off. The nation really became aware of our law and then it was only in a very short period of time where over 20 states passed it. And what I like to say is look unfortunately in this very partisan world that we live in to have so many. So at the time our governor was a Democrat governor, we did have a Republican controlled legislature but he had no qualms in vetoing. He vetoed the fairness of women's sports bill. So this is a very bipartisan effort everybody. When you recognize what's online and what our kids are seeing very easily and how, how very early in age they're seeing, you can't help but want to do something. And so I think it was a testament to how pervasive the problem is and how we pretty much unified around it. And I'm thankful the Supreme Court also saw it that way.
>> Walker Wildmon: When, when you're working on legislation like this, I've heard obviously this, this so called free speech coalition that challenged the Texas law that's made up of a lot of special technology interest, representing multiple multibillion dollar corporations. But in Louisiana in your experience does the, does the, the technology lobby and that's a, that's a broad term. I'm talking the metas, the Googles, the you know, these various multi billion dollar technology companies that host these social platforms. Do they lobby against these type bills? Because I've heard reports that they have in Louisiana but I'm not on the ground there. So what's your experience been?
>> Representative Laurie Schlegel: Yeah, so I've passed a few since the age verification and yes, big tech always and they do it under the umbrella of their associations. so it's not always one particular company coming m to say that we we oppose this legislation but they do it. So when I first passed the age of Verification the one big organization that did oppose it was net, which is a Conglomerate of some, an association of some of the big tech companies. And then I've passed a few others since then. and, and the same associations have come. even some of the executives, some from some of the big tech companies have come to try to oppose or at least amend and try to neuter the bills they totally do not want to take. They don't want the responsibility or they don't want the accountability that comes with actually having children on their platforms.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah, I'm not going to say that's shocking, but it's disturbing because I've presented before Apple, Apple's board of directors at their annual shareholder meeting, talking about this very problem. if shareholders and consumers knew what links these companies like Apple, like Meta, go to, to avoid accountability in this space. It's very, very disturbing. And one example I pointed out when talking to Apple lawyers, on a, on a call leading up to the shareholder meeting, because they didn't, they didn't want me to present so they were trying to talk me out of it. And I showed them how on an Apple Device, A, A minor 13 under 13, which legal minors under 18. But for Apple's purposes they have different standards for 0 to 13 and then 14 to 18. But under 13 you can send pornographic images back and forth with a user using the imessage feature. And Apple doesn't offer a way to block that. And so I was petitioning for basic measures to put in place for all minors, not just a certain age miner and they wouldn't go for it. And so it's very shocking to me, Representative, that they, they want to put up, you know, roadblocks to sensible legislation and sensible moves that undoubtedly will protect minors.
>> Representative Laurie Schlegel: That's been the biggest frustrating part about this all because actually our body as the legislature and then obviously the governors have, have signing these bills, they're all very united into passing this. but yes, big tech come with their lobbyists and they try to, what they try to do is amend it to sort of neuter. It's to make it really not anything. and thankfully we've been able to, I think a lot of the states have been able to push back and, and pass some really good things that push the needle. We did just pass our duty of care bill this last session and yes, they've all, they all came to try to amend it. But you're, when you're contracting with a minor and you're hosting someone, like you said, as young as 13 and whether it's a video game or social media and you're allowing adults just access to them via chat or messaging, to contacting them. We're seeing a lot of, grooming behavior and then it translates to sexual assault of these minors outside in the physical world. So it's something that I think they have to. I won't stop. So, but yeah, it's been very discouraging.
>> Walker Wildmon: Once again, we've been talking to Representative Laurie Schlagel out of Louisiana, representing District 82. She's been a critical, proponent and sometimes author behind some of this critical legislation to protect minors, from harmful pornographic material. Representative, you mentioned your background in counseling.
Laurie Schlegel: Research shows pornography is harmful to minors
before we wrap up, I want to ask you just recap for us the damage that pornography does, not just if there's victims involved, but just to someone's m. Mind and the way their mind thinks about human sexuality. just talk about some of the damage that takes place when people become addicted to pornography.
>> Representative Laurie Schlegel: Sure. And that's why I think we were so successful the first time. Because what I did is I did a webinar with the Women's Caucus and we invited, our male and our female, senators and representatives to come hear from Gail Dines. she's a sociologist. she's done a lot of research when it comes to pornography. And just hands down, peer reviewed research conclusively shows that it's harmful to minors, and whether you're a boy, where it produces more aggressive behavior or for a female, which, because unfortunately research shows 90% of the mainstream pornography out there is, shows some sort of aggression to women. so that's what these young minds are sort of being trained for their sexuality is to see because it's not healthy sexuality that they're seeing. And now they're seeing younger and younger. So they, they say that the average age is around 10 to 12 years old, that they're seeing hardcore pornography online. And, and you can't go walk into a strip club on Bourbon street as a 12 year old and be able to get in. And so it's reasonable common measures that we're putting into place, whether it comes to, on these now social media platforms, to the pornography websites, which now the Supreme Court says it's constitutional to have H verification. And so we're really starting to see, you know, children are really being affected by pornography.
>> Walker Wildmon: Hey, Representative, thanks so much for coming on the program. Representative Laurie Schlegel, appreciate your work there. Thanks for coming on thanks for having me.
The second frontier in the battle against online pornography is protecting children
Absolutely. Folks, I would describe what we're talking about here as really the second frontier on the battle against pornography. With the first frontier being the 70s and 80s where my grandfather Don Wildmon fought day in and day out to get the pornography magazines, beginning with Playboy and Penthouse, pulled from the convenience store shelves. Yes, there was a move to, to put to place pornographic magazines at eye level of children in convenience stores like Seven Eleven. That was the first frontier in the battle against big pornography. And I think with the era of the Internet and social media, we are currently in the second frontier in our battle against online pornography. And we're winning. The reality is, and this is an encouragement, we're not done yet, but we're winning. We've got age verification legislation on the books in over 20 states. Top providers of pornography, including Pornhub, have completely shuttered their services and blocked IP addresses originating from dozens of states, over a dozen states, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, etc. And so we've got to keep this going. There's no reason we can't get this through in 50 states. Absolutely no reason we can't get this through in 50 states. And then we move on to the limiting pornography for adults. The children are the first step. Protecting the children, protecting the little ones, protecting their hearts and their minds and their innocence. But let's not be, let's be clear. Pornography is damaging for everyone. It's creating victims on one side and victims on the other side. And so there's no use case morally in which pornography is acceptable. But the first thing you have to do with any battle is you have to figure out where to start. And where we started, in this era of the Internet and the wild wild west that it has created, the first place you start is protecting the children. Because not just morally, is that the right path to go down when it comes to protection, prioritizing things, but legally as well? It's a much easier path to trick, legally as well. So that's why we're going after protecting children. And then once children are properly protected, we move on to protecting adults. And to anybody who says the government shouldn't legislate morality. Where have you been since the dawn of creation? All that government does is legislate what they view as right or wrong. We'll see you next time.
>> Jeff Chamblee: The views and opinions expressed in this broadcast may not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.
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https://www.ncleg.gov/Sessions/2025/Bills/House/PDF/H805v5.pdf
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