A man who tried to marry his laptop in a legal fight against same-sex marriage is promoting legislation across the country to require a filter to block pornography and human trafficking websites that would be lifted if a user pays USD 20.
The measure pushed by Chris Sevier has been described as the "Elizabeth Smart Law" after the girl who was kidnapped from her Utah home as a teenager in 2002. But Smart wants nothing to do with it, and has sent a cease-and-desist letter to demand her name be removed from any promotion of the proposal.
A bill in Rhode Island is scheduled for a hearing today.
The legislation has drawn criticism from groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, an anti-pornography advocacy group. The center demanded last year that the Sevier stop claiming it supported his work.
Despite those issues, similar bills keep materializing in state legislatures.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which opposes the idea, has tracked about two dozen similar bills in 18 state legislatures this year, none of which have passed.
Sevier and supporters say it would protect children and others by making pornography and sites that allow human trafficking harder to access.
Sevier said that he chose Smart's name because she has spoken about the negative effects of pornography, including that pornography during her captivity "made my living hell worse."
"Now what I find fascinating is I just don't understand how (Sevier) is pulling this off, like how he's convincing so many people to introduce this bill."
In Rhode Island, Democratic Sen. Frank Ciccone, said in a news release that he sponsored the bill because children "have easy access to materials that no child should be viewing, such as pornography and other highly offensive or disturbing material."
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