BATON ROUGE, La. — The Louisiana Senate on Monday unanimously passed new legislation creating more liability for adult websites, introduced by the religious Republican lawmaker behind the state’s controversial age verification law.
As XBIZ reported, in April the Louisiana House voted 101-1 to pass House Bill 77. The bill would “let the state attorney general pursue civil penalties against companies that do not comply with a law that requires pornography websites to verify the age of its users,” the Louisiana Illuminator reported.
HB 77 was introduced by faith-based therapist and local politician Laurie Schlegel (R-Matairie), the anti-porn activist behind Louisiana’s controversial Act 440, which took effect Jan. 1 and requires “age verification for any website that contains 33.3% or more pornographic material.”
Schlegel has claimed that “pornography is destroying our children and they’re getting unlimited access to it on the internet.”
HB 77 calls for “investigation and pursuit of actions for commercial entities that knowingly and intentionally publish or distribute material harmful to minors and that fail to perform reasonable age verification.”
If the bill is signed into law by Gov. John Bel Edwards (D), the Louisiana attorney general will be able to investigate pornographic websites and fine any that do not comply with the AV law up to $5,000 a day, the Associated Press reported. Sites that ‘‘knowingly failed” to follow the law would face additional civil penalties of $10,000 per violation.
The bill was backed by all of Louisiana’s Democratic senators and most Democratic representatives, the second time in a few weeks that Democrats have backed potentially industry-crippling anti-porn bills created by a coalition of religious Republican politicians and powerful religiously-inspired pro-censorship lobbies. Last week, the Texas legislature mandated that all adult sites post a warning comprised of anti-porn propaganda points, with virtually every Democratic legislator voting alongside the sponsoring Republicans.
Republicans throughout the country are currently seeking to outlaw all adult content by overturning the 1973 “Miller Test” differentiating First Amendment-protected sexual material from illegal “obscene” material produced to appeal to “a prurient interest.”
To define “material harmful to minors” in the legislation, Louisiana’s Rep. Schlegel expanded a Miller Test reference to “sexual conduct” into her own feverish fantasy of what such content might entail.
For the religious therapist and Republican politician behind the Louisiana bill, “sexual conduct” apparently involves “prurient interest in nudity, sex, or excretion” and “an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual acts, or lewd exhibition of the genitals.”
Main Image: Rep. Laurie Schlegel
