Laila Mickelwaite, Exodus Cry and their Crusade Against Porn

But there’s a lot more going on here than one woman’s righteous quest to save innocent victims from the ignominy of appearing on Pornhub without their consent. Mickelwaite is the tip of a sprawling iceberg of far-right Christiam activism aimed squarely at taking down the adult entertainment industry—and if doing so involves taking up the anti-sex-trafficking mantle, so be it.

Mickelwaite bills herself as “the founder of the viral #Traffickinghub global movement,” as well as “a leading expert in the anti-trafficking field with a special focus on criminal exploitation in the Big Porn industry.” Her description of her “#Traffickinhub movement” says that its aim is “to hold Pornhub…accountable for enabling and profiting from mass child sexual abuse, sex-trafficking, rape and image based abuse.” But the wording is misleading. Because holding Pornhub “accountable” is not the same thing as “shutting down Pornhub.” And the latter is exactly what #Traffickinghub aims to do, as evidenced its campaign video, released in 2020. The video clearly states: “It’s time to shut down Pornhub, and hold them accountable for the rape, trafficking, and sexual abuse that they enable and profit from.” [Emphasis mine.]

According to its critics, Pornhub and other sites like it have hurt many people during its decade and a half of operation as one of the biggest porn websites in the world. There are many who would likely agree—whether they’re revenge porn victims, alleged victims of sex trafficking who appeared on the site, or legally operating pornographers whose work has been pirated and uploaded to tube sites. But the conflation of “holding Pornhub accountable” and willfully damaging the livelihoods of thousands of models who have come to depend on their legal income from Pornhub? That’s not only dangerous, it’s cruel. But it’s likely exactly what Laila Mickelwaite was going for. She has a long history of conflating legal, consensually made porn with illegal, criminal sex trafficking—very much on purpose.

Mickelwaite got her start in activism as the “director of abolition” at Exodus Cry, a non-profit organization whose stated goal is to “fight sexual exploitation and the sex industry.” And by “fight,” what they mean is “abolish.” Mickelwaite’s title was aimed at the abolition of the global sex industry. As Melissa Gira Grant wrote for The New Republic last December, “Exodus Cry uses ‘abolition’ in the sense used by anti–sex work groups, meaning the abolition of the sex trade, including prostitution and porn, by means of the criminal law.”

Those who enter the trade by choice, says Exodus Cry, are “seduced by the deceptive ‘empowerment’ narrative in our culture.” These people have actually entered “a global system of violence, exploitation, and gender inequality that harms some of the most vulnerable in society.” In other words, sexual empowerment through sex work is a myth, even if it’s the genuine lived experience of many in the commercial sex industry. Why? Because God.

Exodus Cry was founded in 2007 as a weekly prayer group led by Benjamin Nolot, a prominent member of the International House of Prayer (IHOPKC). Exodus Cry was given early support by IHOPKC, and based on recent tax filings and their partnering on events, the two groups are still linked. But Exodus Cry now seeks to diminish their public affiliation with IHOPKC, and for good reason—while Exodus Cry puts its focus on sex trafficking front and center to obfuscate its anti-sex-work leanings, IHOPKC does no such thing. Its founder, Mike Bickle, is a Christian dominionist, which means that he believes that Christians have a God-given calling to take control of political and cultural institutions—by any means necessary. Bickle has stated—publicly—that Trump’s opposition is demonic, that Adolf Hitler was God’s own Jew hunter, and that the Supreme Court is inviting the wrath of God for upholding abortion rights and marriage equality. 

Mickelwaite was “an intercessory missionary” (a full-time staff member) at IHOPKC from 2011 to 2014, according to The New Republic. She moved to Exodus Cry the same year that IHOPKC began “outreach” to the organization. In other words, “Mickelwait is the link between IHOPKC, Exodus Cry, and the Traffickinghub campaign.”

Exodus Cry and Mickelwaite, who started #Traffickinghub together (Exodus Cry hosted the #Traffickinghub website, though Mickelwaite says she founded the movement herself), both hide their evangelical, anti-LGBT, anti-sex-work roots behind a veil of sex trafficking activism. The move is part of a larger shift in far-right-wing tactics to appeal to contemporary social values.

“Over the last two decades, as the anti-porn groups of the 1980s and 1990s proved to have failed, and as the Christian right sought to appeal to a younger generation, many such organizations have sought to redefine their sexual purity mission as one of social justice,” wrote Grant for The New Republic. It’s all part of “a religious right media strategy to reframe conservative ideas of sexual purity as something progressive and fresh, connected to issues like sex and consent.” And, by extension, sex trafficking, which is an affront to consent — and makes for a compelling sound bite.

According to The New Republic, Cole Parke of Political Research Associates told a reporter in 2018, in reference to the Exodus Cry film Liberated, that the conflation of consent with purity was part of a more nefarious strategy. The goal, he said, was “control” above all else, in the form of “adherence and obedience to a Christian fundamentalist worldview, which limits sexuality to the confines of married heterosexual unions.” In other words—pushing right-wing Christian morality into the culture, as IHOPKC believes is its God-given duty. 

All of this is to say that Mickelwaite’s push to “hold Pornhub accountable” by shutting it down entirely may have something to do with helping victims of horrendous sex-trafficking rings worldwide. But her background as a lackey for Christian dominionist groups that are linked to anti-Semitism, anti-LGBTQ agendas, and anti-sex-work activity makes her work with #Traffickinghub feel more like a deliberate attempt to deprive legal, consenting sex workers of paychecks. 

If Mickelwaite and company truly wanted to “hold Pornhub accountable,” there were many more productive routes they could have taken. Among other things, they could have reached out in a meaningful way to the adult entertainment community, thousands of whom have been agitating against tube sites’ lax screening practices and facilitation of intellectual property theft for years. They could have done a lot of things that would have hurt fewer people’s ability to survive doing safe, legal, consensual sex work.

Instead, they reached out to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who has a long history of alarmist reporting and whose poorly contextualized column on December 4, 2020, sent the entire adult industry into a tailspin that banks, payment processors, and porn sites are still experiencing. She and her anti-sex-work pals have deeply impacted the incomes of thousands of legal sex workers.

And Mickelwaite is thrilled about it. On April 23, she tweeted:

#Traffickinghub petition to shut down Pornhub has over 2.2 million signatures from 192 countries

Traffickinghub viral video exposing Pornhub has 33+ million views

4000+ media articles have covered the unfolding story

Pornhub deleted 10 million videos-80% of its site#Winning

— Laila Mickelwait (@LailaMickelwait) April 23, 2021