The Texas Department of Health and Human Services has declined to confirm or deny whether the “health warnings” mandated by the state’s recent anti-porn age verification law are supported by any official documentation or statement produced by that office.
As XBIZ reported, the Republican-authored HB 1181 was passed by the Texas legislature with bipartisan support in May and will go into effect September 1.
The new Texas age verification law — part of a state-by-state campaign by religious conservatives and anti-porn activists to outlaw all sexual material online — compels adult websites to post pseudoscientific anti-porn propaganda disclaimers declaring that “pornography is potentially biologically addictive, is proven to harm human brain development, desensitizes brain reward circuits, increases conditioned responses and weakens brain function.”
HB 1181 is a much-augmented version of Louisiana’s age verification law and its many copycats, and echoes the debunked “porn addiction” language of faith-based anti-porn groups.
XBIZ asked the Press Office of the Texas Department of Health and Human Services if the department could provide any documentation or statement pertaining to those warnings, and clarify whether the language of the warnings has its basis in any documentation or statement produced by the Texas Department of Health and Human Services.
After requesting several days to provide a reply to the query, Press Officer Tiffany Young declined to answer, deflecting the questions with an invitation to contact “the authors of this bill for information about how it originated.”
XBIZ also contacted Texas Department of Health and Human Services Chief of Staff Kate Hendrix and the bill’s main sponsor, Rep. Matt Shaheen (R), but received no reply to the same questions.
Hellbound and Down 