Blumenthal’s KOSA
Senator Richard Blumenthal presents himself as a strong LGTBQ+ ally in his support for The Equality Act… but when it comes to online spaces for young queer kids, is he walking the walk, or just talking the talk?
by Alyssa Steinsiek
Congressional Democrats are proposing that discrimination against somebody for their sexual orientation or gender identity should be a violation of federal law. The Equality Act, a potential amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that’s been put forward to national lawmakers six times since 2015 and never gone the distance, would expand the civil liberties of LGBTQ+ Americans by ensuring that they cannot be discriminated against in matters of housing, public accommodations, education, federally funded programs, credit, and jury service, among other things.
Though he is not the sponsor of this current iteration of the Equality Act, I’ve heard one senator’s name come up a few times in recent conversation and seen his public remarks about the act reported on by a few outlets. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, has publicly endorsed the Equality Act for all the right reasons.
“I will be fighting for the Equality Act no matter how difficult the road. No matter what the odds. Because I know that, ultimately, we will prevail. Just like we did with the Marriage Equality Act,” Blumenthal said, speaking in West Hartford before the town’s Pride celebrations. “All people are equal under the law. No matter who they love, who they are, or where they live. That's why we need the Equality Act. That’s why I’m fighting for it.”
Senator Blumenthal is certainly talking the talk, reassuring advocates with all the right words… but is he walking the walk? Do his actions reflect an understanding of our community’s needs and wants? Can we trust him to listen to and hear us? I’m not so sure.
Blumenthal is a co-sponsor of the Kids Online Safety Act, a proposed bipartisan bill that would define rules for social media and video game companies about how children can be treated when accessing their platforms. The bill stipulates that, should a platform be aware of the fact that a user is underage (it suggests that the primary method of identifying underage users will be user self-reporting), the platform will bear responsibility for ensuring that those kids aren’t exposed to sensitive topics like “suicidal behaviors, eating disorders, and substance use disorders … addictive use, illicit drugs, and federally-defined child sexual exploitation crimes.”
In theory, I agree with measures like this. The internet can be a dangerous place for kids, given how difficult it can be to effectively monitor your child’s online behavior, as well as the prevalence in certain online spaces of predators actively seeking young people to exploit. Unfortunately, these bills often provide conservative lawmakers and litigators with the ammunition they need to antagonize queer adults on the internet.
Blumenthal’s own website explicitly states that KOSA provides no provision allowing lawsuits against online platforms, and makes no changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that would hold companies responsible for content kids are exposed to. That’s a good start, to be sure, but will it truly protect us? If the online kids of today are anything like I was at their age, they’re simply lying about how old they are everywhere they go on the internet, and their parents are often none the wiser. Is it possible that, exercising an overabundance of caution, the people in charge of these online spaces might institute blanket bans on certain topics or content to avoid risking the ire of lawmakers? Will it not only deny queer kids access to safe internet spaces and helpful educational resources, but also impact LGBTQ+ content creators and journalists?
Ultimately, KOSA demands that social media companies and similar platforms must have bear a duty of care to protect kids from the content on their platform, and while Blumenthal and others have made efforts to narrow the scope of the bill, many people still worry that it may result in online censorship and harm done to the young people it’s designed to protect.
It certainly doesn’t help that Blumenthal wants to deride critics of KOSA as “pawns … of big business interests.” He claims to be in regular contact with LGBTQ+ leaders (whoever that might be) to ensure that our concerns are heard, but that sort of flippant dismissal of people who seem to have legitimate concerns isn’t reassuring.
Genuinely, I hope that some version of this bill that protects kids without explicitly harming their right to privacy or taking valuable spaces and resources from them (or adults’ rights to exist freely on the net), but we have to be wary of any proposal to rein in online content to “protect the kids.”
Alyssa Steinsiek is a trans woman journalist who reports on news relevant to the queer community and occasionally posts on BlueSky.
