Kansas moves to join Texas and other states in requiring porn sites to verify people’s ages

TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas is poised to require pornography websites to verify visitors are adults, a move that would follow Texas and a handful of other states despite concerns about privacy and how broadly the law could be applied. The Kansas bill would make it a violation of state consumer protection laws for a website to fail to verify that a Kansas visitor is 18 if the website has material “harmful to minors.” The attorney general then could go to court seeking a fine of up to $10,000 for each violation. Under an existing Kansas criminal law, material is harmful to minors if it involves “nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement or sadomasochistic abuse.” But critics of the bill, mostly Democrats, 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.” That means “being who we are” is defined as harmful to minors, said Rep. Brandon Woodard, who is gay and a Kansas City-area Democrat. Woodard also said opponents don’t understand “how technology works.” He said people could bypass an age-verification requirement by accessing pornography through the dark web or unregulated social media sites. “The information used to verify a person’s age could fall into the hands of entities who could use it for fraudulent purposes,” said southeastern Kansas Rep. Ken Collins, one of two Republicans to vote against the bill.