COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina’s Republican Governor Henry McMaster held a ceremony Wednesday that combined the signing of the new age verification law for adult content with a controversial ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth.
During the photo session showing him signing the bills, McMaster made a rack which merged the laws with the aim of “protecting the innocence of our state’s children” from “threats” and “harmful influences online and offline.”
H. 3424, South Carolina version of the age verification bills sponsored by anti-porn activists across the country is also known as the “Child Online Safety Act” and was originally introduced in December 2022. It passed the Legislature on May 15 and was actually signed into law by McMaster on May 21. Age verification will take effect on January 1, 2025.
Wednesday’s ceremonial signing was deliberately planned by McMaster’s office to make a joint statement on the age verification bill and H. 4624, the “Help Not Harm Bill” that denies gender-affirming care to trans minors in South Carolina. The joint ceremony referred to both controversial bills as “child safety legislation.”
“These signatures reflect our commitment to protect the health and well-being of all of our state’s children from harmful influences online and offline,” McMaster said of the theater-style event, which unlike his May 21 signature, is not required by law om McMaster added that he was “grateful for the support of the General Assembly and all those who worked to bring these critical pieces of legislation to my desk.”
The Help Not Harm Bill, the governor’s office explained, “prohibits health care professionals from knowingly providing gender transition procedures to individuals under the age of 18. Gender transition procedures are defined as puberty blocking medications, cross-sex hormones, or genital or non-genital sex reassignment surgery, used for the purpose of assisting an individual with a physical gender transition.”
The bill also “prohibits public funds from being used directly or indirectly for gender transition procedures” of transgender people, regardless of age, and “prohibits the South Carolina Medicaid Program from reimbursing or providing coverage for these procedures.”
The Child Online Safety Act, the governor’s office claims, “protects minors from harmful online content by requiring websites with 33.33% or more of material deemed harmful to minors to implement an age verification system to ensure that users under the age of 18 are not allowed to access the material. Harmful online content is defined as material or performance that depicts sexually explicit nudity or sexual activity that an average adult applying contemporary community standards would consider the material or performance to have a tendency to incite a minor’s lustful interest in sex speak.”
H. 3424 “makes websites that produce obscene material or promote child pornography or child sexual exploitation liable to an individual for damages, court costs, and reasonable attorneys’ fees as ordered by the court and is open to class action lawsuits,” the office of the governor. added.
Alison Boden, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition (FSC), told XBIZ: “It is unfortunate that South Carolina has chosen to join its neighbors in adopting an ineffective website-based age verification mandate, despite knowing it was unconstitutional.”