Welcome to Ohio, Where it’s “Common Sense” to Jail Minors for Looking at Porn, Evidently

It’s just that one of those good things the Buckeye State has going for it isn’t this new bill proposed by State Rep. Steve Demetriou (R-Bainbridge Township). Dubbed “The Innocence Act,” HB 295 “would require any person in the state to verify their age prior to accessing pornographic websites and would make it illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to view sexually explicit content,” as he described the bill in a recent statement.

“Online pornography is a threat to Ohio children,” Demetriou asserted in his statement. “Studies have shown that pornography is a pathway to mental health issues for children and can be a precursor to sexual aggression. Additionally, it is no secret that the porn industry and human trafficking often overlap. The Innocence Act simply creates a common sense, age-appropriate barrier to ensure that Ohio children cannot access this harmful content with the tap of app on a smartphone.”

There’s a lot to unpack in that single paragraph, including a lot of tried-and-true bits of anti-porn rhetoric that are often asserted, but generally without any supporting evidence or data. But what interests me is the notion that making it a fourth-degree misdemeanor to “recklessly provide false identifying information for the purpose of attempting to access the material or performance that is obscene or harmful to juveniles on the internet.”

While I’m sure it’s possible there are adult residents of Ohio who might consider providing fake ID documents to prevent their actual identity from being documented by whatever organization ends up screening the IDs of Ohioan porn surfers, the far more obvious likelihood is that this provision would be used to prosecute minors who try to lie their way around the state’s age-verification mandate.

It is truly “common sense” to hand a teenager a misdemeanor conviction, up to a 30-day jail sentence and a fine for the oh-so-heinous crime of lying their way on to a porn site?

How about for clever teens who decide to frequent facially noncompliant porn sites? Since such sites clearly won’t be asking for an ID in the first place, ironically enough, those teens wouldn’t be violating the “Innocence Act” because they’re already savvy enough to realize the proposed law doesn’t criminalize minors looking at porn, it criminalizes the act of a minor providing a fake ID in order to look at porn.

Have no fear, though; Demetriou says that despite the clear language of his bill, “obviously, we’re not trying to target children with regards to criminal enforcement,” repeatedly reiterating his appeal to “common sense” along the way.

“I want to protect my family and I want to protect every family in Ohio,” Demetriou said. “This is common-sense legislation that creates common sense barriers for kids to access this harmful material.”

Demetriou’s bill also seeks to rein in the use of artificial intelligence to create “fake” pornographic images.

“With the rise of AI and more video technology, this is a threat that our children and really everyone in the country, every Ohioan faces,” Demetriou said. “We wanted to get ahead of the game and start addressing that.”

While I’m not sure that passing a law against deepfake porn in 2023 is truly “getting ahead” of a phenomenon that started with a video of Gal Gadot created in 2017, I can at least understand why Demetriou thinks this part of the Innocence Act is a worthy idea. Hell, I might even accept wanting to prevent the creation of deepfake porn as a “common sense” desire – which isn’t quite the same thing as a “constitutional law,” of course, but at least it’s arguably easier to prove.

Demetriou also says that his bill is similar to age verification measures recently passed by other states, but he might have missed an important element of the statutes that served as inspiration for his bill. In many cases, those other state laws were structured in a way that makes them very difficult to challenge in court prior to their enforcement, because the courts have found that no state official has a “particular duty to enforce” those laws. But there’s no way a private action on the part of some random Ohio resident can be used to enforce the section that criminalizes using a fake ID to access online porn; that part must be enforced by a state official, who certainly can be named in a pre-enforcement lawsuit challenging the law.

So, when the Innocence Act is challenged in court (and should it pass, that’s definitely a “when” and not an “if”), Demetriou may come to regret applying only “common sense,” rather than carefully considered statutory construction, in coming up with his plan to protect the innocence of Ohioans.

Here’s another bit of common sense the right Rep. from Bainbridge Township might want to consider: IT’S ABSOLUTELY NORMAL FOR TEENAGERS TO BE INTERESTED IN SEX. Hell, it might even be unavoidable for most teenagers to be interested in sex, judging by, you know… the entire history of humankind?

If you’re a state representative who wants to take measures to prevent minors from accessing online pornography, that’s an understandable thing. But wanting to jail minors for 30 days in response to them exploring a natural, normal and fundamentally human impulse? Shit, you might as well change the state’s name to GTFOhio.