Today marks the launch of Radiant Mobile, a Christian cell phone network that automatically blocks all pornographic, “satanic,” and “cult” content. The service, which buys its bandwidth from T-Mobile’s national tower network, will also reportedly roll out a filter that blocks all LGBTQ+ content, including web material related to gender and trans issues, according to MIT Technology Review. The filter will be optional but turned on by default on all phones.
“We are going to create — and we think we have every right to do so — an environment that is Jesus-centric, that is void of pornography, void of LGBT, void of trans,” Radiant Mobile’s founder, Paul Fisher, told the aforementioned publication.
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The anti-LGBTQ+ filter could include “sites that provide information on sex, sex and teenagers, and sexual education, without pornographic content,” including pages and sites with educational health content or journalistic content about LGBTQ+-related entertainment or legislation.
Radiant Mobile’s filter would likely block a website’s individual webpages that feature LGBTQ+ content. But if the website’s most popular pages began regularly featuring queer content, eventually Radiant Mobile’s filtering system could block the entire site, Fisher said.
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T-Mobile didn’t tell the MIT Technology Review if Radiant Mobile’s content filters violate any of the broadband provider’s policies. However, a T-Mobile representative pointed out that Radiant Mobile purchases T-Mobile’s bandwidth through a company called CompaxDigital rather than directly from T-Mobile.
Radiant Mobile’s service will automatically block the following categories with no ways to unblock them:
- adult games
- pornography
- racism
- satanism and cultism
- self-harm
- terrorism
- weapons
Parents can also block 112 additional content categories or cause the phone service to deactivate in certain places or at certain times, to limit usage.
Fisher said Christian influencers will promote the service and that he contacted thousands of churches nationwide to join a program where users can donate part of their $30 monthly service fee to their church. He also wants to market Radiant Mobile to other international countries with large Christian populations.
The company’s Chief Operating Officer Chris Klimis said he got involved with the company to “do something” about Christianity’s pornography crisis. He worries that cell phone services allow children to access explicit sexual content, even accidentally, and said he felt “appalled” by a recent survey showing that 67% of pastors have a “personal history” with such content.
Fisher said that, to make up for all the blocker content, Radiant Mobile will offer a library of religious content, including AI-generated Bible videos featuring hundreds of fairy-tale children’s characters alongside testimonials and devotionals, as well as games based on Bible scriptures and stories.
Republicans and Christian conservatives have long targeted pornography as a social problem.
Just last year, Republican legislators introduced a bill that would make it a federal crime to send a nude selfie or any sexual image to anyone for any reason. Christian House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has said that he and his son monitor one another’s porn use through a web service called Covenant Eyes.
Moreover, Project 2025, the policy blueprint for the president’s second term, says that merely existing as a transgender person or talking to children about LGBTQ+ people is a form of pornography.
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