Over the past week, I’ve watched a renewed push to have the Senate pass the KOSA, a terrifying bill that’s intended to erase LGBTQ+ voices from the internet. The bill’s main sponsor, Sen. Blumenthal from Connecticut, recently pushed out an amended version of the bill that removed the very worst problem but left the rest of the bill nearly as awful as before. Unfortunately, that led a number of Senators, including my own Sen. Schumer (who holds a great deal of sway, as Majority Leader), to jump off the sidelines and co-sponsor the bill. So things look pretty dark at the moment.
Many of us who follow these issues see a repeat of the disastrous SESTA/FOSTA of 2018. As with those bills, there’s little doubt that the KOSA will cost people their lives.
The trouble is, so much has already been written about the problems this bill will cause that it’s hard to see how I can make much difference at this point. And yet, organizations that ought to know better and that ostensibly represent me are heavily lobbying for the bill.
But I feel so overwhelmed by all this that I feel almost paralyzed with respect to getting anything down in writing in an attempt to push back.
Hopefully I can make some progress in the morning.