Letter Circulates Asking Trump to Oppose a UN Treaty that Promotes Pedophilia

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D. | January 9, 2025

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 10 (C-Fam) A letter is circulating among conservative leaders in Washington DC asking President Trump and the U.S. Congress to oppose a controversial new UN treaty that allows countries to de-criminalize AI-generated child pornography and also sexting by minors.

This “eviscerates the strict standard to prosecute child pornography” currently in international law, “a standard based on over twenty years of federal and state law practice promoted internationally by the U.S. government,” the letter explains.

The new treaty adopted by the General Assembly last month is open for signatures and will come into force if at least forty countries ratify it.

The treaty requires countries to put in place law enforcement measures they cannot be expected to afford without billions of U.S. support. The letter asks Congress to withhold funding for any law enforcement programs that would undermine the strict standard to prosecute child pornography currently in international law.

Proponents who allow for virtual child pornography argue that the consumption of virtual material sexually depicting children does no harm to real children, and therefore, there is no justification for restricting speech or the expression of sexuality. In recent years, however, the U.S. Congress has dismissed this argument by adopting laws that allow for the prosecution of virtual child pornography.

“Allowing virtual child pornography of any kind is a recipe for disaster,” the letter explains. “Congress has known for over thirty years of the importance to prosecute all forms of pseudo-child pornography, including virtual child pornography, because it places children at risk. At some point the criminals will want the real thing. To believe that they will be satisfied with virtual titillation is reckless.”

In the case of sexting by minors to adults, Western proponents of the treaty argue that children over the age of consent have a right to freely express their sexuality. A delegate from Europe argued the Western point of view with candor during negotiations reported in the Friday Fax last year. A U.S. delegate, speaking for the Biden Administration argued that “we need to allow some flexibility for minors who engage in sexual activity and to allow domestic laws with different ages of consent.”

The letter from social conservatives dismisses these arguments as dangerous.

“These loopholes are a boon for the worst sex abusers and sexual deviants who will gain access to an endless stream of legally generated real and virtual child pornography. This will lead to the sexual exploitation of more children.”

The letter also criticizes the treaty for placing hurdles in the way of law enforcement aggressively prosecuting the exploitation of children, calling this “insidious to minors.” The letter argues that prosecutors need “discretion to charge minors with crimes” as in other areas of criminal law because it helps law enforcement get to the bottom of criminal activity, including uncovering if there are criminal rings and even adults behind the sexual exploitation.

Western governments, who finalized the treaty last summer, boasted that the treaty is the first ever to prohibit the non-consensual dissemination of intimate images, sometimes called “revenge porn.”

This is not enough to justify the loopholes in the treaty, according to social conservatives, because the new treaty places the “burden of protection” from exploitation by perverts and criminals on children themselves instead of technology platforms and law enforcement.

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