ABOVE: Jared Trujillo (Photo courtesy Twitter.)
Jared Trujillo, a queer lawyer and former sex worker, is speaking out against the EARN IT Act, a proposed law which could potentially have a negative impact on LGBTQ sex workers.
The Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2020 – the EARN IT Act – was introduced to the Senate Judiciary Committee by Sen. Lindsey Graham back in March. It would establish a 19-member commission, charged with creating guidelines for online companies, with the aim of preventing, reducing and responding “to the online sexual exploitation of children, including the enticement, grooming, sex trafficking and sexual abuse of children and the proliferation of online child sexual abuse material.”
Trujillo, who currently sits as president of the nonprofit Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, called the EARN IT Act a “death blow to internet privacy and the end of needed online mediums the most marginalized LGBTQ+ communities rely on to survive” in an op-ed for The Advocate. The Association of Legal Aid Attorneys put out a statement online defending sex work as being “the oldest profession in the world” and called on some Democratic Congress members to oppose the act’s passage.
Sex work is the oldest profession in the world, and it’s not going anywhere. Why does the federal government want to deprive sex workers of safety tools they need to survive? @SenSchumer @SenGillibrand @JerryNadler please oppose this bill. https://t.co/UJHSWnjrz0
— Assn Legal Aid Attys (@alaa2325) July 2, 2020
Further, Trujillo argues that the EARN IT Act will give U.S. Attorney General William Barr and his office the latitude to “establish coercive guidelines that will force online platforms to moderate and censor content,” as well as “create backdoors for law enforcement to access encrypted data.” Apart from eroding the privacy of LGBTQ sex workers, who may utilize the communication tools provided by online platforms to network with prospective clients, Trujillo asserts that the threat of legal action for incompliance might lead these online companies to remove sexual content from their platforms altogether.
“If online platforms do not follow Barr’s guidelines, they could lose their liability protection under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which would make them susceptible to lawsuits,” he said. “To avoid liability, many platforms will simply ban all sex-related content and communications.”
Trujillo is adamant that support for the LGBTQ community and support of the EARN IT Act are fundamentally incompatible.
“Elected officials cannot be both pro-LGBTQ+ and pro-EARN IT,” he said.
Trujillo says that different aspects of the queer experience may make LGBTQ youth more likely to pursue sex work as a profession.
“LGBTQ+ young people are up to eight times more likely than their peers to trade sex for survival for a multitude of reasons, including employment discrimination, housing instability, for sexual liberation and the many existing biases transgender community members encounter,” Trujillo said.
Trujillo believes this relationship demonstrates that adopting a pro-LGBTQ stance entails “recognizing the humanity and needs of queer and trans sex workers,” which also requires acknowledging the usefulness of online communities to queer sex workers.
“LGBTQ+ sex workers create online networks to keep fellow community members safe, minimize harms and fight exploitation,” he said.
Trujillo also cited the history of sex work advocacy in the LGBTQ community and said that the restrictiveness of the EARN IT Act would only undo such progress.
“Since before Stonewall, Black and Brown LGBTQ+ sex workers have operated networks to protect the most vulnerable community members,” Trujillo said. “Transgender Stonewall heroes like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera raised money and provided housing for LGBTQ+ homeless young people in the sex trade. The internet expands the efficacy and visibility of these acts of extraordinary kindness tenfold, which saves countless lives … EARN IT would coerce online platforms to ban or censor sex-related content, thereby dismantling these vital survival networks.”
The political autonomy of LGBTQ sex workers could also be jeopardized by passage of the EARN IT Act, according to Trujillo. The provision of access to encrypted data given to law enforcement officials through the proposed law could discourage LGBTQ+ sex workers from speaking out on the injustices they face working in the commercial sex industry.
“Enabling law enforcement to access digital conversations between sex worker organizers could be chilling to their political organizing, and potentially deadly,” Trujillo said.
Trujillo says there are other legislative solutions that the federal government could employ to address the core issue of the EARN IT Act – the sexual exploitation of children in online spaces.
“Protecting children from exploitation is a laudable goal, but the EARN IT Act does not do that,” he said. “There are existing federal laws that the government can use to combat child exploitation that it does not consistently enforce.”
A petition started by the digital rights advocacy group Fight for the Future to block passage of the EARN IT Act has more than 500,000 signatures as of press time.
