“Sexual  Material” Wording In Republican Bill Targets LGBTQ+ Materials, Ideas

If you’ve ever tried to visit an adult website while in Utah, Louisiana, Texas, Florida, Kansas or roughly a third of the United States represented by conservative lawmakers, odds are you’ve been blocked with either a website restriction, or the website owner simply saying they don’t serve in your area. 

That’s part of the goal with a provision in Project 2025, where drafters and supporters of the document who now serve in various levels of federal and state governments are trying to stop pornography from being distributed across the United States. But what exactly is pornography is up for debate, especially as emboldened conservative and religious parents begin arguing that LGBTQ+ content is considered “pornographic.” 

That debate has now come to Arizona, with a Republican state lawmaker who picked up a bill that calls for people to verify their age ahead of entering porn sites. 

Late into the legislative session, the bill—House Bill 2112—still going through the bill-to-law process. The proposal was retained from a Senate Committee of the Whole calendar on April 17.

Rep. Nick Kupper (R-Surprise) ran the bill, which is similar to the one vetoed last year. Many Republicans and Democrats have gotten behind the proposal, which seeks to require that people prove they’re at least 18 years old before accessing porn online. Enough Democrats voted for the bill to override Hobbs' veto in the House, though since that vote advocates and lobbyists have met with them and said they have been locked in to vote against the bill.

Mike Stabile testified at the Capitol against Kupper’s bill twice this past winter, and said it could do little to prevent children from seeing pornographic content. Stabile is the public policy director for Free Speech Coalition, a trade and advocacy organization of the adult entertainment industry and its workers. He said policies like this are often misunderstood and their potential is “hugely underestimated."

LOOKOUT politics reporter Tori Gantz recently spoke with Stabile to hear about why he’s concerned HB 2112 could be signed into law, and what that it could mean for internet censorship.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. 

LOOKOUT: What is this bill really about?

Mike Stabile: I think that these bills are a Trojan horse. They come in with what seems like a very common sense argument: That we should keep kids from accessing adult websites. In reality, what's being passed is a broad censorship bill for the internet. HB 2112 and other bills like it have been introduced in states across the country, ostensibly to prevent minors from accessing pornography–at least that's the sort of way they bill it. In reality, the definition that they talk about “material harmful to minors”—I think in HB 2112 it's “sexual material harmful to minors”—is incredibly broad and is being used in other contexts to remove LGBTQ+ books out of libraries; to threaten librarians with arrest; to stop drag shows in states like Tennessee; and, in some states, to threaten Target even over pride displays in their stores. 

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LOOKOUTTori Gantz (she/they)

LOOKOUT: It’s talked about as a protective measure for the youth. If passed, who would this bill affect?

Stabile: First of all, it affects anyone who might go on an adult website, regardless of whether they are over 18 or not. I think one of the things that people don't realize, and a lot of legislators don’t realize, is that there's no way to age-verify just minors. You have to require everybody who comes to a website to scan their face, upload an ID, undergo a background check, these invasive biometric processes that are the way that the regulations are enforced. But beyond that the definition is much broader. We think obviously about people going to adult sites, but there are concerns about how this could be applied to LGBTQ+ sites, or reproductive rights content–anything that might be determined to be “harmful to minors.” As we're seeing in other states, the way in which that language is being interpreted is incredibly broad, and I think that people in Arizona have good reason to be concerned that this language, and these types of regulations, could be weaponized against all sorts of material online to either force them to identity verify everybody who comes through their site, or ultimately, to harass and sue them if they're not doing that.

LOOKOUT: There’s an amendment that would allow parents to sue and collect damages. Is this unique to Arizona’s version of the bill?

Stabile: No. HB 2112 is a civil enforcement bill. These are the two main ways these bills have been introduced across the country. Some have a private right of action—which is a parent or other private person suing—some have an attorney general being able to bring a case. Both are real threats. But I think that when you're dealing with individuals, the risk is greater to people, in particular, because the definition of what is “harmful” to minors is fairly subjective, and all it takes is a conservative parent, a conservative district, to say, “I saw that my child went on the site. They're telling me now that they are trans, I'm going to sue you for damages,” and it's much less controlled in some way. So obviously with the attorney general you have the power of the state that can come in and determine who to go after and who not to, but I think that it's much more of a wild card when you have these private right of actions.

There's a bill right now, for instance, in Texas that applies to booksellers using the same language and the same enforcement as we're seeing here. And booksellers in Texas have come out and said, it is wildly dangerous, because a parent can come in and say, ‘My child has read this book,’ whether it's 1984, The Handmaid's Tale, or Fun Home, All Boys Aren’t Blue, or something like that) ‘and I'm going to sue you for allowing them to access this book.’ It may well be that you're able to make the argument that you are protected by the First Amendment, or all these other things, but that's going to cost you a lot of money to defend. Somebody bringing you into court, you've already lost, especially if you're a small website or a small bookseller. It's going to cost you $100,000, $200,000 to defend yourself. And so what that encourages is self censorship. What you see is, once you see a lawsuit like that, everybody suddenly gets quiet.

LOOKOUT: Where else in the United States have you seen similar legislation proposed? And if it passed there, what happened? Can you also tell me about the U.S. Supreme Court related to this?

Stabile: We're looking at [a minimum of] 20 states that have laws specific to the internet. But the movement is sort of much broader. The idea of “material harmful to minors” is being weaponized across the country against LGBTQ+ content, and I think that my biggest concern as somebody who's been a queer activist for 30 years is that this gives more power to the people that want us silenced. We know from Project 2025 that the right regards anything to do with "gender ideology" as pornography. That sex ed is regarded as pornography. That literature that even talks about sex or sexual abuse is regarded as pornography. In passing these bills, I think that there are a lot of legislators who are adopting language and giving more power to people to ripe for abuse.

Yes, the Supreme Court is looking at the Texas [case] right now. I was in Washington in January when the justice heard the case. The challenge for the justices, and for legislators when they come across this, is that it seems very simple. We card people when they go into an adult bookstore, or we call people when they buy alcohol. Shouldn't we just be able to do this online as well?

What we saw the justices struggle with, and I think what I see legislators struggle with, is the fact that when you start creating these systems, when you start creating this sort of regulation, there's a huge burden on the consumer. So what we've seen in other states that have passed this legislation is that when a city tries to age verify–when a site complies with the law–they lose 95% of their consumers. 

Most people don't want to submit to a facial scan and upload an ID. … People just hit the back button on their browser and they find something else. They go to a site that's located outside the U.S. and doesn't comply with these laws, or they go to a site like Twitter/X that has adult content, but is exempted from these laws, theoretically, and they go back to them another way. I guess the question is always: How do we create a [mechanism that restricts minors] from accessing adult content that doesn't have a burden on adults ability and right to access the same content? And how do we create something that doesn't threaten the ability of nonadult content producers to talk about things like LGBTQ+ lives and identity, or to talk about sexuality, or talk about gender without fearing that you're going to face a lawsuit?

LOOKOUT: How are these bills being introduced? Is there model legislation, or are they mirrors of something brought up in Congress?

Stabile: These are effectively Heritage Foundation bills and initiatives.

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LOOKOUTTori Gantz (she/they)

LOOKOUT: Is there a different solution to the problem that lawmakers say exists than what is presented in HB 2112?

Stabile: If you want to keep minors from accessing adult content and adult websites, the most effective way to do it is going to be at the device level, meaning that there's some sort of verification on the device that communicates with websites that this is a minor and that you're to block them. Adult sites are [and have been]  for decades registered with filters to make different protocols, to make ourselves easy to block. We don't want minors to access adult content. Doing things at the device level not only is more effective, (it can block sites even if they're not in the U.S., even if they're not complying with the law,) but also, it has very little oversight for adults. There are plenty of things I use my phone for that it scans my face. It already has my information. I don't have to share it with 1,000 other sites, and I don't have to worry that my ID is going to end up in the wrong hands; or that I'm going to be the victim of a phishing attack; or that my information isn't going to be deleted, and it's going to be leaked somewhere.

The problem with the platform-based legislation is what we see is it is fueling an exponential growth of sites that have illegal content, and sites that have revenge porn, and CSAM, and sites that are located overseas that don't comply with any U.S. law–let alone an age verification one. … As with any prohibition, what we're seeing in other states is that it is driving sites to some of the worst actors on the internet, rather than encouraging reasonable compliance.

LOOKOUT: How can people take action on HB 2112?

Stabile: Call your legislator, write your legislator. We have a website that makes it easier, but speak out about this, because I think that one of the things that is so difficult is that these are framed as bills to prevent minors from accessing porn. That's really difficult to vote against.