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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2023 - 2024
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | February 29, 2024 12:58 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Jill N. Cooper and Rep. Darisha K. Parker |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Requiring Age Verification To Pornographic Websites To Prevent Children From Gaining Access |
| Following the lead of other jurisdictions in the United States, we intend to introduce legislation in the near future to require pornographic websites to verify the age of all website visitors to protect minors from harmful and potentially damaging material. As many of our children spend an increasingly greater portion of their spare time on the Internet – with many, in fact, spending more time online than in the real or physical world – it is important to impose guardrails on websites with ubiquitous access that are substantially devoted to the publication or distribution of pornography. According to the National Institute of Health, exposure to pornography at a young age may lead to poor mental health and promote sexist and objectifying behavior. To safeguard children from sexual content, including some of the more extreme sexual content that may be easily accessed online, this legislation will require any entity that publishes pornographic or sexual content online to utilize a commercially reasonable method of age verification. Significantly, this legislation does not prohibit content that, when taken as a whole, features or contains serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors. We plan to introduce this on Thursday, March 7th. Please join us in cosponsoring this important piece of legislation to better protect our children. |
Introduced as HB2143