Prominent MAGA Supporter Is Worried New KOSA Won’t Suppress Enough LGBTQ Speech
By now you know that Senator Richard Blumenthal has released a new version of KOSA, the misleadingly named Kids Online Safety Act, that he pretends fixes all the problems. It doesn't. It still represents a real threat to speech online, and in particular speech from LGBTQ users. This is why Blumenthal, a prominent Democrat, is putting out press releases including supportive quotes from infamous anti-LGBTQ groups like the Institute for Family Studies and the American Principles Project" (one of the leading forces behind anti-trans bills across the US). Incredibly, it also has an approving quote from NCOSE, formerly known as Morality in Media," a bunch of prudish busybodies who believe all pornography should be banned, and who began life trying to get salacious" magazines banned.
When a bill is getting supportive quotes from NCOSE, an organization whose entire formation story is based around an attempt to ban books, you know that bill is not good for speech.
Why is a Democratic Senator like Blumenthal lining up with such regressive, censorial, far right nonsense peddlers? Well, because he doesn't give a shit that KOSA is going to do real harm to LGBTQ kids or violate the Constitution he swore an oath to protect: he just wants to get a headline or two claiming he's protecting children, with not a single care about how much damage it will actually do.
Of course, as we noted, the latest bill does make it marginally more difficult to directly suppress LGBTQ content. It removed the ability of state Attorneys General to enforce one provision, the duty of care provision, though still allows them to enforce other provisions and to sue social media companies if those state AGs feel the companies aren't complying with the law.
Still, at least some of the MAGA crowd feel that this move, making it marginally more difficult for state AGs to try to force LGBTQ content offline means the bill is no longer worth supporting. Here's Charlie Kirk, a leading MAGA nonsense peddler who founded and runs Turning Point USA, whining that the bill is no longer okay, since it won't be used to silence LGBTQ folks as easily:
If you can't read that, it's Charlie saying:
The Senate is considering the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a bill that looks to protect underage children from groomers, pornographers, and other predators online.
But the bill ran into trouble because LGBT groups were worried it would make it too easy for red state AGs to target predators who try to groom children into mutilating themselves or destroying themselves with hormones and puberty blockers.
So now, the bill has been overhauled to take away power from from state AGs (since some of them might be conservatives who care about children) and instead give almost all power to the FTC, currently read by ultra-left ideologue Lina Khan. Sure enough, LGBT groups have dropped all their concerns.
We've seen this pattern before. What are the odds that this bill does zero to protect children but a lot to vaguely enhance the power of Washington bureaucrats to destroy whoever they want, for any reason?
If you can get past his ridiculous language, you can see that he's (once again, like the Heritage Foundation and KOSA co-sponsor Senator Marsha Blackburn before him) admitting that the reason the MAGA crowd supports KOSA is to silence LGBTQ voices, which he falsely attacks as groomers, pornographers, and other predators."
He's wrong that the bill can't still be used for this, but he's correct that the bill now gives tremendous power to whoever is in charge of the FTC, whether its Lina Khan... or whatever MAGA incel could be put in place if Trump wins.
Meanwhile, if Kirk is so concerned about child predators and groomers, it's odd you never see him call out the Catholic church. Or, his former employee who was recently sentenced to years in jail for his collection" of child sexual abuse videos. Or the organization that teamed up with Turning Point USA to sponsor an event, even though the CEO was convicted of coercing and enticing" a minor. It's quite interesting that Kirk is so quick to accuse LGBTQ folks of grooming" and predation," when he keeps finding actual such people around himself, and he never says a word.
Either way, I'm curious if watching groups like TPUSA freak out about this bill not being censorial enough of LGBTQ content will lead Republicans to get cold feet on supporting this bill.
At the very least, though, it's a confirmation that Republican support for this bill is based on their strong belief that it will censor and suppress LGBTQ content.