ow Did Bipartisanship Happen in the Senate?

According to Sarah Parshall Perry and Connor Semelsberger at The Daily Signal, Americans have something to cheer about during the dismal days of watching our nation be destroyed. Perry and Semelsberger claim that there was bipartisanship on the Senate Judiciary Committee last week! I recognize that the report may be shocking, but apparently it is true. 

In a rare show of bipartisanship last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill to combat child sexual abuse material online and establish reporting requirements for online platform providers. The bill also reactivated a decades-old provision obligating certain organizations and professions to report suspected child sexual abuse. But it wasn’t just the bipartisanship of the bill’s passage that made it notable. It was what it took to get to bipartisanship in the first place.

While it was originally littered with problematic language that opened loopholes for tracking and reporting religious entities and parents who might object to “gender transition” procedures or abortions for minor children, conservative senators worked hard across the aisle to make the bill one that both parties could support.

Sponsored by Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the Strengthening Transparency and Obligations to Protect Children Suffering from Abuse and Mistreatment Act, or the “STOP CSAM” Act (S. 1199), creates a user-friendly system for reporting and removal of child sexual abuse material online.

It requires that all internet platform providers report occurrences of child sexual abuse material on their platforms to law enforcement’s cyber-crime tipline within 60 days of discovery. It also creates a civil cause of action against both the perpetrators who create the material and the online platforms that host it if they fail to report the material to the tipline.

It is long past time that our elected leaders worked together to make America better. The fact that Republicans and Democrats worked together to protect children is a good sign. I hope that there will be more bipartisan work done in both the House and the Senate. We should expect more from our elected leaders.