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.
Don’t even act like the SCOTUS upholds the Constitution, they uphold the christian bible now. So unamerican.
Ain’t the point of a right that it’s protected from the government?
That’s why it goes through the courts
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.
You gotta be a really profoundly uncomfortable, nervous human being
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.
Notice how we’re already asking past the sale with the tacit labeling of “sexual material harmful to minors,” with the presupposed declaration that sexual material is automatically harmful to minors.
The all-consuming mission to look at boobies is essentially universal for all pubescent boys from about 12 all the way to the age of majority. This is well known, and none of us came off any the worse despite widespread availability of older brothers’ back issues of Hustler, Usenet, dial-up BBS systems, and ultimately the world wide web.
If teens weren’t naturally interested in sex where wouldn’t been all them teenage pregnancies. Q.E.D.
The all-consuming mission to look at boobies is essentially universal for all pubescent boys from about 12 all the way to the age of majority.
Not true. Some boys also want to look at dicks.
And some girls want to look at boobies, too.
And some genuinely could care less about looking at either.
This is an excellent observation.
We now no longer have the debate over whether or not this content is necessarily harmful to minors. It’s now automatically bad, and the new framing is: shouldn’t we ban bad things?
Should expect more of this kind of newspeak/doublespeak as the Trump years continue.
Because there’s an underlying implication that allowing teenagers to seek out sexual content on their own is the same as an adult presenting it to them. They want you to feel like they’ll call you a pedo if you disagree with their framing
Just saying, the shit you can find on the Internet does not come even close to what Hustler was. There is instant access to all kinds of weird and fucked fetish shit that just wasn’t accessible in the 90s and earlier.
Bizarre fetish shit was very much available in the 90s and earlier. It just wasn’t in hustler or playboy.
There’s a vid on archive.org of the Spice Channel that must have been off someone’s VHS tape. It flickers a lot and is barely watchable, but I was curious what we were all missing back then.
Turns out, way more softcore than I was expecting. Slightly more hardcore than Skinamax at the time, but not by much.
How else they going to keep up viewership if you aren’t edging for hours?
Get ready for the slippery slope. Anything conservatives don’t want you to see or read will be placed behind an “identify yourself” firewall.
And they will use the information they collect to blackmail you.
SCOTUS working hard to install Taliban 2.0
The vague threat of “think of the children maybe being exposed to sexual things” challenging our first amendment right but it becomes some huge debate if a woman is being harassed/stalked/threatened online.
**they are justififying destroying our rights for their feelings **
they are justififying destroying our rights for their feelings
Well yeah, the P stands for Projection in the party of “facts don’t care about your feelings.”
I’m calling it right now. They use this as first amendment cover for TikTok.
I think Epstein highlighted that there is a much bigger problem going on than some 15 year old looking up “mum gets railed by football team”.
Too bad he’s not around to testify. They did a great job of murdering him behind bars.
Bars… Barr… hmm.
It’s just the first amendment.
I mean we’ve got plenty of others.
Freedom of speech is so important it is literally the first thing they remembered to add in.
They didn’t even mention individuals having the rights to own guns, but god damn they had to add that one to the second amendment through the courts.
Militias are armed citizens…
My point is that the courts have been taking the most generous possible interpretations of the 2nd amendment.
An individual is not a militia, yet every citizen can own a gun based on the generous interpretation of the courts. Even if you aren’t in a well organized militia.
Open carry? They read the 2nd amendment and thought it said individuals should be allowed to open carry for any reason at all.
These are generous interpretations of the second amendment. But for the first amendment, the courts are much more eager to limit rights.
Only when organized, trained and commanded by the state. Armed rabble is not a militia, despite the current usage of the term.
Can you explain your position? Honest question, because if I just take your post “Militias are armed citizens” I can use logic to know that to be false. Militia can be comprised of armed citizens, but armed citizens are not militia…
A log cabin is made of logs, but a log isnt a cabin?
Can you explain your position?
‘Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary’ - Karl Marx
I had no idea Karl Marx was an author of the constitution of the United States! Wow! Thanks!
Your argument is a logical fallacy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_a_disjunct
https://www.britannica.com/topic/militia
military organization of citizens with limited military training, which is available for emergency service, usually for local defense. In many countries the militia is of ancient origin; Macedonia under Philip II (d. 336 bc), for example, had a militia of clansmen in border regions who could be called to arms to repel invaders. Among the Anglo-Saxon peoples of early medieval Europe, the militia was institutionalized in the fyrd, in which every able-bodied free male was required to give military service. Similar arrangements evolved in other countries. In general, however, the emergence in the Middle Ages of a quasi-professional military aristocracy, which performed military service in return for the right to control land and servile labour, tended to cause the militia to decay, particularly as political power became increasingly centralized and life became more secure. The institution persisted nevertheless and, with the rise of national monarchies, served in some measure to provide a manpower pool for the expanding standing armies.
No you misunderstood. But also then proved my point? So I don’t know I guess have a nice day.
“A well regulated militia”
Back then that meant a gun group with regular training, any civillian in the militia could also own guns for private use
It does mention “the people” though.
I’ve always have trouble with this one. The second amendment is a big problem in this country, especially combined with our hatful culture. DC v Heller should have gone the other way because it would have saved lives and allowed some progress.
But when I read the amendment, to me it comes across very much like “the people have the right to guns so that the militia can be called to arms” and not just “the militia gets guns.”
The amendment is outdated and the framers could never have anticipated our current state, much less been in favor of it. Maybe they even misspoke and did only mean for the militia members to be able to keep their guns at home. But what they wrote sure reads to me like the conservatives want it to, at least as far as the individual right to own guns.
This is just an academic discussion anyway. These weapons are part of the personal identity of at least tens of millions of Americans, plus we have a fully Republican government incoming, plus the court that would have to do something about it is even more conservative and corrupt than before.
After Trump’s presidency the USA will have to open up its constitution for a rewrite.
Just gonna say I’m fine with people owning guns. I just think the courts have interpreted the amendment very generously. More so than any other amendment by far.
They meant militia members to have guns at home. And the states that demanded that were the southern states, where the militia existed to catch runaway slaves and to put down slave rebellions. There are a number of early debates where the southern states criticized the northern ones for not making an effort to keep their militias in a good state of readiness.
We’re going to see a lot more of these challenges to SCOTUS precedent in the coming years. The Dobbs decision was them stating loud and clear that they will find any excuse to justify their prefud8ced decisions.
it’s so shocking that the right-wing’s commitment to free speech was entirely performative and predicated on no principle whatsoever
Yes… Shocking… I am shocked
Coincidentally, I just rewatched this the other night (for like the thousandth time). I feel like it gets more and more poignant (and TLJ’s acting impresses me more) as I get older…
And it does kind of apply here. In the film, Jones’ character is just at a loss as to “who the hell these people are” after witnessing their apparently nihilistic and seemingly random murder spree.
I feel that in my bones now. Who the fuck are these psychopaths?
some republicants cheering for the scotus ruling today will be scrambling to try to legislate around it tomorrow… because their porn habits will get hacked and released.
The law doesn’t apply to elite Republicans, so they’ll just carry on as before.
What’s taught in schools: the parents should have a say! Don’t let the government decide what to teach our kids!
Books in libraries and content on the internet: the government must step in and make certain content illegal!
Of course, fascists don’t care if they’re hypocritical. They say whatever gives them the most power in any situation, so calling out hypocrisy won’t stop them. It’s still good to do, though.
And they’ll cry freedom the entire time
Don’t let the government
decide what toteach our kids!
Soon they’ll make sexual partners register with the state or straight up make premarital sex illegal. And anyone found breaking the law (i.e. women getting pregnant) will go to jail.
… will go to jail and be forced to carry the pregnancy to term, be billed for delivery services, and raise the kid on her own. Nothing screams “stable childhood” like the government forcing your kid on you as punishment for getting pregnant.
And then soon after CPS will be called and they’ll take away the kid and I don’t even want to think about where they’ll send them.
Work camp
The kid will be taken away and placed in a for-profit foster-care situation, or even worse, the kid will be adopted by fundies.
