- cross-posted to:
- usnews
- cross-posted to:
- usnews
An age verification bill in Kansas that is the most extreme in the country has passed both House and Senate and is on its way to the governor’s desk. The bill will make sites with more than 25 percent adult content liable to heavy fines if they don’t verify that visitors are over the age of 18. It also calls being gay “sexual conduct,” which critics say could set up the state for more censorship of LGBT+ citizens.
Not just ban it, but completely outlaw it in the old sense of the word. Anyone who they claim “purveys” or “produces” porn could be on The List (you know the one). Of course, these terms will be defined in the broadest terms (one could likely assume they already have all the bills for this written on some legal expert’s hard drive as we speak, just waiting to be delivered to whoever they want to introduce it), and will be applied to pretty much anyone that they wish gone, at any time they wish them to disappear. Did you draw something mildly NSFW in your notebook when you were 12? That’s production. Did you write slashfic back in freshman year? Yup, you go on The List.
This also conveniently leaves the door open to class sex education material as “pornography”, which several states have already done (these states are generally testbeds for later national propositions).