There's no place like the Kansas senate, Toto.
This wave of draconian age verification requirements for websites that feature adult content have been steadily spreading across the US, a particularly nasty strain of some unspeakable STD. But rather than unexplainable bumps way down you-know-where, the symptoms here include completely draconian, invasive, and in this case, downright offensive legislation that reflects the most regressive opinions and policies of extremely conservative government.
"Sexual conduct," under Kansas law, means "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." The Associated Press reported that the bill's critics, including Democratic Rep. Brandon Woodard, "argued that the law could be interpreted broadly enough that LGBTQ+ teenagers could not access information about sexual orientation or gender identity because the legal definition of sexual conduct includes acts of 'homosexuality.'"
Samantha Cole, 404 Media
You don't need to know of anything about queer theory to know that conflating "homosexuality" in general as "adult content" is extremely regressive (duh) and will only serve to further stigmatize youths (and everyone, really) who seek to know more about human sexuality in the broadest possible sense. What's the matter with Kansas?
Most of the states that have enacted these age verification laws impose them on sites that are 1/3 porn/adult content or more. Kansas' law lowers this number to 1/4, which means that Twitter and Reddit may be effectively considered porn sites.
Under this legislation, parents of children inclined to unmitigated Google-ing could theoretically sue websites that provide information about sexual preference to their children. Where the legal limit of that is, and to what degree this could sensor sex education, the arts, day-to-day life in general, will be entirely up to the courts. All this will likely lead to a sharp increase in VPN subscriptions.
