Juts days after a lawmaker in New York state introduced a bill to attach a $2 surcharge to every purchase of porn, online or off, a Hawaii state senator (who also happens to be the father of a current presidential candidate) has sponsored legislation to charge internet users a one-time, $20 fee to access porn sites.
The bill is sponsored by Hawaii state Senator Mike Gabbard, who is the father of congressional House Representative Tulsi Gabbard, who announced her candidacy for the Democratic 2020 presidential nomination on January 12.
"It doesn't make sense for children to have access to X-rated material on their cell phones," the elder Gabbard told CNN. "By making it harder for people to access these porn sites, we can make prostitution hubs harder to access, which will reduce sex trafficking.”
The alleged connection between porn sites online and “prostitution hubs” was not made clear by Gabbard, who is perhaps best known nationally for his hard-line opposition to LGBTQ rights.
In 1995, Gabbard founded an organization in Hawaii known as Stop Promoting Homosexuality America, telling Honolulu Magazine, “Homosexuality is not normal, not healthy, morally and scripturally wrong.” He also hosted an anti-gay radio program titled Let’s Talk Straight.
Tulsi Gabbard worked for her father’s organization, which used the trade name Alliance for Traditional Marriage, which lobbied to add an amendment to the Hawaii state constitution banning same-sex marriage. At the time, the younger Gabbard openly backed her father’s positions, including advocating against a bill to fight against anti-gay bullying in Hawaii. The bill, Tulsi Gabbard said, was tantamount to "inviting homosexual-advocacy organizations into our schools to promote their agenda to our vulnerable youth.”
After she declared her candidacy for president last month, the 37-year-old congressional rep apologized for her earlier “hurtful” and “wrong” anti-gay viewpoints and statements.
While Tulsi Gabbard does not have a lengthy record on issues relating to porn and sex work, she was one of 174 Democrats in the House who voted in favor of the “anti-sex trafficking” FOSTA legislation last year. Only 11 House Democrats voted against the bill. The bill has forced major sites that accepted classified ads from sex workers to stop doing so.
The Hawaii bill follows efforts in several other states other than New York to propose hitting porn fans with a new tax for accessing adult material. In January, a state legislator in Arizona proposed a similar $20 surcharge on porn access, with the added revenue going to fund a border wall between southern Arizona and Mexico, as AVN.com reported.
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