MISSOULA — Lawmakers in Montana have moved to kill House Bill (HB) 492 – which would have required consumers to “opt-in” with their ISP’s to access adult sites – on a procedural technicality, according to local news reports.
State Rep. Derek Skees, a Republican representing the mountain community of Kalispell, attempted to pass HB 492 with the intention of mandating internet companies to only offer hardcore pornographic content if customers opt-in for it. The bill also made it a crime for anyone under the age of 18 years to access porn content.
Skees, a staunch anti-porn advocate, was forced to apologize for blocking Democratic members of the committee he is the chairperson of for a crucial vote on the bill. It turns out that he deliberately blocked the minority Democrats because he was concerned about their position on the extent of the law which screams unconstitutionality and ignorance about technology.
“I got frustrated and rammed it through, and that’s not right,” Skees said, perhaps not realizing the potential series of jokes surrounding his remarks. “I should not have done that..so I offer my apologies to all of the committee, that I led us down that road.”
House Bill 492 was originally introduced by State Rep. Brad Tschida, R-Missoula, notes information from the state legislature.
It appears that Skees intention to “ram” HB 492 brought on the wrath of House Republican leadership who ordered Skees to reconvene the House Energy, Technology and Federal Relations Committee. He told reporters that his fellow lawmakers were scheduled to hold a committee meeting on the legislation.
Skees claims that he thought the Democrats on his committee were “playing a game with us on Saturday to try [blocking] us from having a quorum.
“I didn’t know what was going on,” he added, “so I just jumped into the meeting quick, to get us out of here fast, because everyone was wanting to leave.”
That clearly backfired. The committee, excluding the Democrats, voted 7 to 0 to send the bill to the House. After Skees screwed up, the full committee voted 9 to 3 to kill the bill because of the technicality.
“I don’t have any excuse as to why I did it,” Skees said.
State Rep. Kelly Kortum, D-Bozeman, released a statement saying that the bill, if it passed, would cause more issues than fix. Kortum said that the bill “would kill how the internet works and take us basically back to a telegraph system, taking us back 100 years.”
HB 492 is eerily similar to other bills proposed in state legislatures across the country. Notably, lawmakers in Iowa, Utah, and North Dakota have issued proposals that block regulated and consensual pornographic content under the guise of supposedly protecting children.
