ARLINGTON, Va. — Ms. magazine on Tuesday published an article examining how state age verification laws, promoted as a way to protect children online, are being used to censor LGBTQ+ and abortion-related content.
In the piece, titled “Age-Verification Laws Seek to Erase LGBTQ+ Identity from the Internet,” Electronic Frontier Foundation activists Rindala Alajaji and Paige Collings write, “The internet age-verification craze that’s sweeping the nation isn’t really about protecting little Dick and Jane from Pornhub — it’s about giving government and companies the power to decide what’s ‘harmful’ and rolling back all Americans’ rights, especially those of LGBTQ+ people.”
While the adult industry’s lobbying and legal efforts have mainly focused on how the slew of AV bills and laws being advanced around the country by religious conservative activists impinge on free speech and privacy rights, advocates for other causes have been calling attention to the dangers these laws pose to marginalized groups and political dissent.
“These pernicious ‘for the children’ bills would let politicians deem harmful LGBTQ+ content, or content about abortion rights, or even content about a political party other than their own,” Alajaji and Collings argue. “These are censorship bills, and let us assure you, porn is only a small aspect of these politicians’ real worries.”
The characteristic looseness of AV laws in defining what material is “harmful to minors,” the Ms. article contends, opens the way for censorship of all kinds of material beyond adult content. As an example, the authors cite Oklahoma’s AV law, which relies on a definition that includes content about homosexuality.
“All these efforts fail to protect children from the actual harms of the online world, and instead deny vulnerable young people a crucial avenue of communication and access to information,” the piece concludes. “And at a time when LGBTQ+ individuals are already under vast pressure from violent homophobic threats offline, these online limitations have an amplified impact.”