Congress will consider passing federal age verification legislation this year via the SCREEN Act.

Short for “Shielding Children’s Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net,” the bill requires websites to verify the ages of American consumers trying to buy or access adult content.

Senator Mike Lee (UT) and Representative Marry Miller (IL) introduced the SCREEN Act in both chambers last month. They believe it will help parents shield their kids from pornography that, too frequently, is only a click away.

“It is time for our laws to catch up with technology,” Lee wrote in a press release announcing the bill.

“The SCREEN Act addresses the urgent need to protect minors from exposure to online pornography and stop those who profit from stealing the innocence of America’s youth.”

Several pro-family organizations support the bill, including the Family Research Council.

The Bill
The SCREEN Act, H.R. 1623 in the House and S. 737 in the Senate, would create new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations on the sale and display of content “harmful to minors,” including what which:

• “Appeals to the prurient interest in nudity, sex or excretion.
  
• “Depicts, describes or represents in a patently offensive way, with respect to what is suitable for minors …”

West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey signed the Riley Gaines Act, codifying terms like “male” and “female” in law to protect single-sex spaces.

The Riley Gaines Act (SB 456), according to the governor’s office:

• Enshrines the definitions of “male” and “female” in law;
• Protects the existence of women’s single-sex spaces, such as locker rooms, bathrooms, rape crisis centers, dormitories and prisons.
  

“Today we sent a strong message that West Virginia stands with women,” said Governor Patrick Morrisey.

“West Virginia will not bow down to radical gender ideology — we are going to lead with common sense, and the Riley Gaines Act does exactly that.”

The bill was overwhelmingly approved by the West Virginia Senate in a 32-1 vote, and in the West Virginia House of Delegates by a 90-8 vote.

SB 456 “reaffirm[s] the longstanding meaning of sex, male, and female in state law” and preserves women’s restrooms, multiple occupancy restrooms or changing rooms, and sleeping quarters for women in facilities where women have been “traditionally afforded privacy and safety from acts of abuse, harassment, sexual assault and violence committed by men.”

A year ago, I took an online class through Regent University’s School of Divinity when another student posted an image in a discussion post: a beautiful visualization of “Bible Cross-References.”

The image was created by Chris Harrison, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute. He also directs the university’s Future Interfaces Group.

The image takes data from 63,779 cross references in the King James Bible, between its 1,189 chapters, depicting them in a “multi-colored arc diagram.” Cross references are words, phrases, people and quotes used by one biblical author and repeated by that author or picked up and used in other Bible books.

Harrison explains his visualization, saying, “Each of the 63,779 cross references found in the Bible are depicted by a single arc — the color corresponds to the distance between the two chapters, creating a rainbow-like effect.”

Harrison’s academic work, listed on Google Scholar, includes titles about computers and technology this English major can barely begin to understand, such as “TeslaTouch: electrovibration for touch surfaces.”

Another of his research presentations is titled, “Electrick: Low-Cost Touch Sensing Using Electric Field Tomography.”

“Electric Field Tomography.” Sure.

But the Bible Cross-References I get. The image demonstrates the interconnectedness of Scripture.

You can tell a lot about a culture by how its people spend their free time and disposable income.

OnlyFans, an X-rated internet content site based in England, generated over seven billion dollars last year. With over 300 million users, more than 40% of which are believed to be based here in the United States, the company strives to provide its subscribers with all kinds of tawdry and pornographic content.

The site boasts 4.1 million “creators,” 84% of whom are female. Not surprisingly, 70% of the paying customers are male.

Last week, one “creator” filmed herself having sex with 1,000 men in a single day. The site eventually removed the video because they said they couldn’t prove if everyone involved was over the age of 18.

That same woman claims to be making over one million dollars a month on the site.

Friday’s Wall Street Journal features the sad tale of “celebrity women” cashing in on the perverted interest of voyeuristic men:

Today, the most lucrative way for many female celebrities to sell sex is OnlyFans. In theory, it is a content-neutral platform that enables any individual to sell subscriptions of any kind to fans, promising “creative ownership,” “inclusivity” and “freedom” to would-be “creators.”

Lily Allen, a British singer who had two platinum-selling albums in the 2000s, posted on X last year that she earned more money selling pictures of her feet on OnlyFans than from streams of her music on Spotify.