SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION NO. 4

        A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION, Recognizing and finding that pornography is a public health crisis leading to a broad spectrum of individual and public health impacts and societal harms.

    WHEREAS, pornography is creating a public health crisis and its harms are beyond the capability of the individual to address alone; and

    WHEREAS, efforts to prevent pornography exposure and addiction, to educate individuals and families concerning the harms of pornography, and to develop recovery programs must be addressed systemically in ways that hold broader influences accountable in order to counter the sexually toxic environment pornography perpetuates; and

    WHEREAS, due to the advances in technology and the universal availability of the internet, young children are exposed to pornography at an alarming rate, with twenty-seven percent of older millennials, age twenty-five to thirty, reporting that they first viewed pornography before puberty; and

    WHEREAS, pornography leads to low self-esteem and eating disorders, increased problematic sexual activity at younger ages, and an increased desire to engage in risky sexual behavior as young adolescents; and

    WHEREAS, pornography often serves as children and youths' sex education and shapes their sexual templates; because pornography generally treats women as objects and commodities for the viewer's use, that generally teaches girls they are to be used and generally teaches boys to be users; and

    WHEREAS, pornography normalizes violence against and abuse of women and children by treating women and children as objects and often depicts rape and abuse as if it were harmless. Moreover, pornography equates violence towards women and children with sex and equates pain with pleasure which increases the demand for sex trafficking, prostitution, child sexual abuse, and child pornography; and

    WHEREAS, pornography has potential detrimental effects on excessive users such as: emotional, mental and medical illnesses, shaping deviant sexual arousals, difficulty forming or maintaining intimate relationships, diminished brain development and functioning, problematic or harmful sexual

behaviors, and addiction; and

    WHEREAS, pornography use has a detrimental effect on the family as it is linked to lessening desire in young persons to marry, dissatisfaction in marriage, and infidelity:

    NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the Senate of the Ninety-Second Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the House of Representatives concurring therein, that the Legislature recognizes the public health crisis created by pornography in this state and acknowledges the need for education, prevention, research, and policy change at the community and societal level in order to address the epidemic that is harming the people of our state and our country as a whole.

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Adopted by the Senate,

Concurred in by the House of Representatives,

Matt Michels President of the Senate	Kay Johnson Secretary of the Senate
G. Mark Mickelson Speaker of the House	Arlene Kvislen Chief Clerk of the House