Kansas, No ID, No Porn!
Kansas has followed a dozen other states, including Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Texas and Utah, requiring porn websites to require submission of state-issued ID to access their content. The Republican legislators in Kansas are making it all about protecting the children. Using the vague phrase “harmful to minors” with a legal definition of “acts of masturbation, homosexuality, sexual intercourse or physical contact with a person’s clothed or unclothed genitals or pubic area or buttocks or with a human female’s breast.”
In that case, the government should require streaming services such as Netflix to do the same; I saw more tits & ass in movies as a teenager than I ever did in porn, mostly originating from the United States. I would argue that social media is infinitely more harmful to minors than porn could ever be. And let’s be honest, the average 11—17-year-old is smarter than these idiots in state and federal congresses, easily bypassing such restrictions with VPNs, many of which are free and can be signed up for with a free email address, or shifting to the unregulated dark web. Not to mention “borrowing” their parents’ ID.
This is not about protecting children; it’s about pushing their Christian nationalistic agenda. Literally red states are pushing an agenda of Christian indoctrination, with the Ten Commandments being displayed in Louisiana state-funded schools. In Oklahoma, bible study will be a requirement in all public schools, claiming that the bible is a historical document, again making claims that the US was founded on Christianity. I would point you to the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
But I digress; the objective here is to shame people into not enjoying online porn, hoping that having to upload a government-issued ID will dampen their self-pleasuring tendencies. The most significant issues for me are privacy and security concerns. Are these porn sites going to protect your data? What’s to stop them from storing your uploaded documents, which would make them a target for hackers.
Also, the vagueness of the wording of the law could potentially allow for this law to be used to block access to non-pornographic LGBTQ+ content, denying young people access to websites and resources covering LGBTQ+ issues, which is another bullshit Republican culture war talking point.
If a porn website does not enforce this requirement, how do these states plan to enforce it? In Kansas, the law states that if a website fails to verify that the visitor is at least 18, they can be hit with a fine of $10,000 for each violation. Parents could also sue for damages of up to $50,000, which tells the story that the state wants to encourage parents to sue to drive pornographic websites out of the state.
Pornhub is taking the step of blocking all users in the state of Kansas, along with Arkansas, Montana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Virginia, which have passed similar laws. Pornhub has the following statement on their website when visiting their website from Kansas today;
I don’t believe that anyone objects to systems to prevent children from accessing pornography, but this is not the solution, as it’s so easily bypassed by a tech-savvy child, which accounts for most kids today. We already have legitimate porn websites employing the RTA (restricted to adults) system, which can be used in conjunction with parental controls on children’s devices. In my opinion, this is where the responsibility lies; parents should monitor what their children access online and take appropriate actions to protect their children from porn sites, but no, the party of small government wants government regulation.