Banning porn has been on the Republican agenda since like the 40s.

The Supreme Court is heavily in favor of “states rights” now, so state politicians know they can cater to special interest groups (for donations of course) with impunity. States are heavily gerrymandered, so they have little risk of losing their position. In some cases, such as book, education, voting, and immigration laws, the goal is to further ensure the states remain Republican in the future (prevent children from growing up “woke,” and prevent immigrants from living there, which tend to vote Dem). Democracy in the U.S. is pretty broken, and is slowly being dismantled further.

It used to be that pushing positions based on morality was taboo on both the left and the right. Then the social left started pushing things that it wanted purely because of morals and the much larger, much better organized religious right realized there’d be no significant political pushback for doing so with things they’ve wanted.

In the past the religious right in the US had been kept in check by the fiscal conservative and neocon wings of the party. But after Trump, those wings no longer have the control they had before.