As of January 1, 2023, Louisiana's Act 440 is requiring pornographic websites do a little bit more than having visitors click a button to gain entrance.
Now people wanting to view naughty pictures will have to scan in a government-issued ID that verifies their age.
The law is targeted at protecting minors because porn is "creating a public health crisis" (entities like the CDC have used this language to justify coming after guns and pushing woke policies, so good on Louisiana for using the Left's own language against them).
Pornography is creating a public health crisis and having a corroding influence on minors. Due to advances in technology, the universal availability of the internet, and limited age verification requirements, minors are exposed to pornography earlier in age. Pornography contributes to the hyper-sexualization of teens and prepubescent children and may lead to low self-esteem, body image disorders, an increase in problematic sexual activity at younger ages, and increased desire among adolescents to engage in risky sexual behavior.
Pornography may also impact brain development and functioning, contribute to emotional and medical illnesses, shape deviant sexual arousal, and lead to difficulty in forming or maintaining positive, intimate relationships, as well as promoting problematic or harmful sexual behaviors and addiction.
Similar to the clever way Texas threw a wrench in abortion laws before the Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade, the law will be enforced by allowing any party harmed by a company not verifying age with government-issued IDs to sue said company and have legal standing to win their case.
I imagine they used this system of enforcement to ward off any appeals of the law by the pornography industry under free-speech precedents.
The law says that the companies are not allowed to keep any of the identifying information they get from the people visiting their sites.
But I also imagine online pornography use will drop significantly in Louisiana, with people worrying about who will find out what deviant things they've been watching online and the possibility that their picture ID will be associated with their debauchery.
Hard to clear that history isn't it?
While I don't believe we'll ever be able to legislate morality, I do think keeping things like pornography, LGBT activism, climate hysteria, and Marxism off the plates of minors who are too young to understand them is essential for a moral society.
So I see this as a win.
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6
