Summary
The Supreme Court’s hearing of Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton signals potential limits on First Amendment protections for online pornography.
The case involves a Texas law mandating age verification for websites with “sexual material harmful to minors,” challenging the 2004 Ashcroft v. ACLU precedent, which struck down similar laws under strict scrutiny.
Justices, citing the inadequacy of modern filtering tools, seemed inclined to weaken free speech protections, exploring standards like intermediate scrutiny.
The ruling could reshape online speech regulations, leaving adults’ access to sexual content uncertain while tightening restrictions for minors.
You gotta be a really profoundly uncomfortable, nervous human being to think of sex as bad.
What an absolute sign of weakness.
Or, and hear me out on this one, you’re a member of a group, like various other groups, that want to control every aspect of human lives, including sex, to bind them to our little group forever so we can control them even more?
You don’t have to think sex is bad to think porn is bad for children and teens.
This Texas law and others like it are bullshit, but making strawman arguments about them isn’t helping anything.
That’s an interesting way to say “religious”.
Project2025 and it’s evangelical backers are a major driver of this prudishness.
They’re godsdamned freaks is what they are. Their religion says sex is disgusting and evil. Mine says it’s holy and pleasure is sacred. But neither of us should get to decide the law based on what gods we got. I know that. Jewish Americans know that. Hindu Americans know that. Muslim Americans know it too. And I ain’t seen Buddhists trying to ban alcohol in any city in America, nor shinto folks trying to divert public school money to preaching about amaterasu. Turns out it’s just the Christians round here who don’t get that when your religion says you can’t do something it means you don’t get to do it, but the rest of us are more than free to.
It’s fringe fanatical Catholics on the Supreme Court who are driving this. Maybe they couldn’t find enough fundies who knew how to read.