Representative Laurie Schlegel helped Louisiana pass the first law forcing porn companies to verify users’ ages in 2022. Today, 18 other states have replicated Schlegel’s age verification policy, making it one of the biggest bipartisan policy movements in America.

The Louisiana representative celebrated the growth of pornography protections at last week’s Social Conservative Convention, heading up a panel on age verification laws and why she believes they’re working.

Though she worked as a sex addiction therapist prior to her election in 2021, Schlegel claims she had no plans to tackle pornography when she entered office.

Instead, she told the audience, her crusade began with an unlikely inspiration — music sensation Billie Eilish.

Eilish made headlines a month after Schlegel’s election for confessing that pornography damaged her brain.

“I started watching porn when I was like 11,” she told shock jock Howard Stern in an 2021 interview. “I didn’t understand why it was a bad thing. I thought that’s how you learned to have sex … I think it really destroyed my brain and I feel incredibly devastated that I was exposed to so much porn.”

Eilish believes her early exposure to violent and unrealistic sex prevented her from forming healthy relationships later in life.

“I’m so angry that porn is so loved, and I’m so angry at myself for thinking that it was okay,” she confessed.

Eilish’s plight convinced Schlegel to pursue policies keeping kids away from inappropriate content online. Age verification seemed like the simplest solution, but she worried porn sites couldn’t check people’s ages without violating their privacy.

“I care more about people’s privacy than big tech or porn,” Schlegel declared, drawing appreciative chuckles from conference-goers.

With privacy concerns forefront in her mind, Schlegel said she consulted LA Wallet — a company already offering IDs.

LA Wallet launched in 2018 after the Louisiana government legitimized digital driver’s licenses. The service gained steam during the pandemic, when it began offering in-app driver’s license renewal, digital vaccine verification and age verification for home deliveries of alcohol and other restricted goods.

By April 2022, more than 1.3 million Louisianans were using it.

Schlegel asked LA Wallet’s parent company, Envoc, whether technology could verify people’s ages without compromising their identity.

Envoc not only assured Schlegel such tech existed but offered to build it for her.

According to Calvin Febre, the company’s president, LA Wallet created a code that prevents age verification services from accessing a person’s entire identity. Instead, when a third party contacts LA Wallet for a user’s age, it delivers a tiny bit of data confirming “yes, they are over 18” or “no, the are not over 18.”

Febre told the The LA Illuminator:

We scrub any kind of logging of [personally identifiably information]. Even [for] law enforcement, [or] litigation if it ever comes, it’s going to be very difficult for us to even know who was verified.”

Today, porn sites primarily use LA Wallet to verify viewers’ ages — a process Schlegel says takes less than one minute.

Envoc convinced Schlegel privacy and age verification laws weren’t mutually exclusive. Her next challenge, she recalled, was garnering bi-partisan support. She credits unlikely allies like Gail Dines, a self-described radical feminist and anti-porn scholar, with whipping up left-leaning support for the bill.

Dines defended the alliance to The Hamilton Independent:

It’s not a marriage. Let’s be very clear on this … this is about doing the right thing when it comes to controlling capitalism that’s out of control.

Regardless of Dines and Schlegel’s ideological differences, the two came together to create legislation that empowers parents to protect their kids.

When asked why her policy succeeded where others had failed, Schlegel could only point to technology.

“The availability of pornography has changed,” she explained. “We know the average kid sees porn at age 11, and that kids as young as five access it.” She believes parents and lawmakers are motivated to make changes after seeing the ways early porn viewership is affecting kids.

“But technology has also changed,” Schlegel ended on a high note, crediting advances in age verification technology for creating systems that don’t infringe on people’s privacy.

Schlegel’s well-deserved victory lap illustrates how God-given human ingenuity can alleviate some of the most intractable problems. The Daily Citizen encourages families and citizens to take similar approaches to raising children and engaging with culture.

Keep calm, carry on, and use the brain God has given you!

To learn more about age verification legislation, take a look at the Daily Citizen’s bill tracker here.

Additional Articles and Resources

Florida Signs Age Verification Law for Porn and Social Media

Social Media Age Restrictions — Which States Have Them and Why They’re So Hard To Pass

Pornhub Quits Texas Over Age Verification Law

Pornography Age Verification Laws: What They Are and Which States Have Them

Pro-Family Think Tanks Offer Smart Policy Ideas Protecting Children from Big Tech