New Texas Law Slaps Extreme Requirements on Adult Sites

AUSTIN—Texas has become the seventh state in the union to mandate age-verification in order to access pornographic sites. But unlike those passed in other states, House Bill (HB) 1181, the Texas bill’s identifier during the legislative session, imposes a number of drastic requirements on adult sites extending far beyond age-verification.  HB 1181 was signed into law June 12 by far-right Texas Gov. Greg Abbott with literally hundreds of other bills to very little fanfare. The meager coverage it received in the mainstream media included a story by the religious Catholic Review for the Archdiocese of Baltimore and one by First Amendment attorney Ari Cohn in Techdirt.com criticizing the Texas state legislature as operating under the precept that the right to free expression “simply does not exist.” Similar to legislation passed in other Republican-held states like Utah and Louisiana, HB 1181—which goes into effect September 1—doubles down on those states' age-verification measures by mandating that adult sites include warnings declaring porn a threat to the public’s health. These so-called warnings are crafted as official warnings from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission similar to those displayed on a pack of cigarettes or a 12-pack of beer. The warnings will feature the following text: “Texas Health and Human Services Warning:” and messages like (1) “Pornography is potentially biologically addictive, is proven to harm human brain development, desensitizes brain reward circuits, increases conditioned responses, and weaken brain function;” (2) “Exposure to this content is associated with low self-esteem and body image, eating disorders, impaired brain development, and other emotional and mental illnesses;” and (3) “Pornography increases the demand for prostitution, child exploitation, and child pornography.” Additionally, a message will be required at the bottom of every page of an adult website, in 14-point font or larger, with the helpline phone number for the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Allie Eve Knox, an independent performer and industry activist based in Texas, told AVN that she isn’t surprised by HB 1181 becoming law. “First of all, it's kind of a shit law,” she said. “It’s kind of crazy that they’re going to deem porn a public health risk when there is no science or data behind that. In fact, there is a lot of science and data that shows porn addiction isn’t real.” Surgeon General warnings on cigarettes and e-cigarettes, according to Knox, are backed by data. “There’s actual data and facts behind that type of stuff,” she professed. “Moral panic is really what is behind this. And that’s fucking insane to me. But it doesn’t shock me in Texas.” Knox's sentiments echo those of Nicole Prause, an independent researcher on sexual behavior at the University of California-Los Angeles, who told this author in a commentary piece for Techdirt that “the statements on science effects are just false, they have never been shown,” when asked of the science backing the assertions in House Bill 1181’s language. Prause went on to say that the science is “completely fabricated” and that “the bill flies in the ace of scientific consensus.” Knox summed up her feelings on recent Texas legislation by asserting that the state “hates women. ... They have done everything they possibly could to make it the most fascist state that exists in the United States.”  Ari Cohn, the aforementioned First Amendment attorney, has similar objections from the standpoint of freedom of expression in Texas. Cohn, a Chicago-based free speech counsel for the tech advocacy group TechFreedom, called the state legislature’s goal in House Bill 1181 “generally reducing the consumption of protected expression disfavored by a government that considers it psychologically harmful to readers/views.”  He adds in his Techdirt column on the bill: “HB 1181 seeks to protect citizens not from a product with physical effects, but rather, from ideas and how they make us think and feel. Can that be any government interest at all, let alone a substantial one?”