A Virginia state senator has fired back in response to threats he’s received over Virginia’s new age-verification law for porn, asking if it’s really “that important” to people.
State Sen. Bill Stanley (R), the author of S.B. 1515, told WTOP while he expected people to be annoyed over porn websites requiring users to submit identification to verify their ages, he didn’t think he would receive threats.
Under S.B. 1515, any online provider that has a “substantial portion” of sexual content on its website is subject to “civil liability” if they don’t enact an age verification method to check the user’s age.
“It’s like, dude, why am I getting threats?” Stanley told the outlet in response to messages left on his answering machine. “Because you now have to put in your name and address or an ID to access the internet, bro? I mean, seriously. Your porn – it’s that important to you?”
Stanley told IJR these threats normally “come on the weekends” and after hours when nobody is there, adding that they’ve received about a “dozen or so, maybe more.”
“The ones during the daytime are about policy and they’re very, mostly respectful,” Stanley told IJR. “We had one this morning that the guy was yelling, but he wasn’t being hateful, hateful. He just wants his porn back.”
The bill was signed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-Va.) in May and became law on July 1, according to WTOP.
Virginia’s new age-verification law has faced criticism from Democrats and the Free Speech Coalition, a non-partisan nonprofit that seeks to “protect the rights and freedoms of the adult industry,” according to the group’s website.
Mike Stabile, a spokesman for the Free Speech Coalition, has labeled the law as “unconstitutional,” arguing it is “legal speech,” according to WTOP.
Pornhub shut off access to users in Virginia over the passing of the new law. When users from the state attempt to access the site, they are greeted with a message explaining how “elected officials in Virginia are requiring us to verify” the age of users.
“While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk,” the message reads.
Is anyone else’s Pornhub not working?
— L. Louise Lucas (@SenLouiseLucas) June 30, 2023
Virginia State Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D) took to Twitter to express her dissatisfaction with the new law. In a Twitter thread, Lucas called Youngkin out for not creating a “system for age verification” and instead leaving it in the hands of “websites with porn to do the verification process.”
After “talking to a set of parents who said” this issue was “a concern in their family,” Stanley told IJR he was inspired to pass the legislation. After this discussion, Stanley began researching the issue and drafted the legislation “near the end of the bill filing session.”
“To the person that makes that threat, my intention wasn’t to upset them. My intention has always been to protect our children from the effects that pornography has on them and the accessibility that our children have to porn on phones, tablets, and all that stuff,” Stanley told IJR, stressing the importance of setting guardrails.
Stanley pointed out to IJR how “we don’t allow children to buy alcohol unless they’re 21” and people don’t leave him messages telling him they want their children to “go to the ABC store and get a six-pack.”
“We accept that as the limitations of what is acceptable and OK for adults but not for children. It’s the same thing here,” Stanley said.
IJR reached out to the Free Speech Coalition for a statement but did not receive a response back prior to publication.