States call for age limits on porn sites

The law sets minimum ages for alcohol, tobacco, and gambling, and pornography should be no different, say supporters of a new law in Virginia. Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed the law on Friday requiring pornographic websites to implement more rigorous age verification protocols to block content from minors. Legislation protecting children from adult sites has gained popularity over the past year, with states like Utah, Montana, Louisiana, and Texas implementing or considering similar laws.

Virginia’s law requires adult websites to use commercial or government databases to confirm that users are 18 or older before allowing them access. The law applies to websites in which over a third of the content is considered harmful to minors. Sites that do not comply open themselves to civil liability damages from underage users and government entities.

“I believe that children should be protected from pornography and I want to make sure that we do that,” Youngkin told The Virginian-Pilot last week. Republican state Sen. Bill Stanley championed the bill, which received bipartisan support in the Virginia Senate and will go into effect on July 1.

“When we had video stores, that was pretty easy to enforce because kids under the age of 18 couldn’t go in the backroom,” Stanley told fellow lawmakers. “But now we have the internet, [which is] not only brilliant in terms of what it can do for all of our lives but also possesses a dangerous edge.”

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed a similar age verification bill that took effect on May 3. The measure, championed by state Sen. Todd Weiler, requires users to submit government identification scans to verify their ages before accessing adult websites.

“It’s part of our job as society—and maybe a subset of my job as a lawmaker—to try to protect children,” Weiler said. “I’m not gonna blame all of society’s ills on pornography, but I don’t think it’s helpful when a kid is forming their impressions of sex and gender to have all of this filth and lewd depictions on their mind.”

When Utah lawmakers passed the bill earlier this month, the Free Speech Coalition, a sex industry trade group, filed suit against the state. The group argued the measure violated the First Amendment rights of porn makers, website operators, retailers, and others. The May 3 lawsuit stated that Utah imposed a content-based restriction on speech not justified by a compelling state interest nor narrowly tailored to meet that interest. After the law went into effect, the website Pornhub blocked Utah users of all ages in protest.

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation commended Utah legislators.

“Research is clear that pornography can be extremely harmful to children, as it has negative impacts on the brain and relational development,” said CEO Dawn Hawkins in a news release. “Pornhub’s protest of Utah’s law reveals an ugly truth: Pornhub will lose revenue if children cannot access pornography on its site.”

Louisiana implemented an age verification requirement on Jan. 1, requiring users to submit a government ID to prove their age before viewing explicit content. Both chambers of the Montana legislature passed an ID submission measure to verify age, which could go into effect as soon as January 2024. Texas legislators also posed a similar bill requiring ID submission, which passed the first committee in April.