The move to protect children from online porn sites is growing state by state, according to a new report, with about one-third now requiring age verification for access.
So far, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Virginia all have requirements that aim to protect kids, according to a Washington Stand report.
And legislatures in Arizona and Alaska are in the processing of adopting those limits.
The Supreme Court is in alignment, too, recently rejecting the agenda from a pro-pornography coalition to stop Texas’ enforcement of its age verification requirements.
“This effort to protect children from pornography is laudable and demonstrates the need for federal legislation requiring age verification,” explained Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow at the Family Research Council, with which the Stand is affiliated.
“Such legislation could build momentum for a total prohibition of pornography. We also need to demand more protective measures from device manufacturers to filter out this content. Parents can always do more, but help from the institutions we build and fund is long overdue,” she said.
The rights of children include not being “assaulted by this content,” she charged, in the report. “That porn producers masquerading as free speech advocates think only the adults performing sex acts need protection is frankly disgusting and depraved.”
PornHub, described as the largest porn website, already has shut down in multiple states where age verification is required, including Utah, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Texas and Virginia.
“Now, when internet users visit the site, they are greeted by a message criticizing the states’ laws barring minors from accessing pornography,” the report said.
The porn promoters have gone to court multiple times, claiming state restrictions infringe upon free speech, but the Supreme Court, in allowing Texas’ law to be enforced, made clear it isn’t going that direction.
Dani Pinter of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation told the Stand., “It is crucial that states are moving in the direction of protecting children from pornography exposure by requiring pornography websites to verify their users are adults. Pornography can be extremely harmful to children, with negative impacts on the brain and relational development.”
She warned that already studies have documented the use of porn in “grooming” children for victimization, and porn sites “have allowed filmed child sexual abuse, rape, sex trafficking, and other non-consensual explicit material on their websites — material that normalizes criminal activity.”
RMG Research polling, the report noted, has found that 83% of America voters support a national requirement for age verification for the material.
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