Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton has determined that, for now, online purveyors of what we call pornography have an obligation to ensure that those accessing their content are of legal age. That states can require it, police it, and presumably punish violators. It seems sensible enough if a culture has decided the minds of children are not prepared for a long list of responsibilities and decisions.
Driving. Smoking. Consuming alcohol. Vaping. Consenting to sexual contact, signing contracts, or owning property, holding public office, being transported across state lines, employment options, voting, jury duty, joining the military, piercings or tattoos, playing the lottery, skydive, buy fireworks (there’s actually a long list of things they cant buy), open a brokerage or bank account, buy a firearm, rent an apartment, use a ridesharing scooter, and on an on.
Culturally, we’ve accepted that despite the absence of age references in the American Constitution on the matter of rights (human or natural), it is in our best interests as a society in most, if not all, states to restrict or prohibit minors from a long list of “things.” One of them is pornography, which has, for better or worse, been constitutionally protected as free speech, art, or expression.
Pornography, something you’ll know when you see it, is widely available on the internet, and if we’re honest, is bad for just about everyone, but human beings have a right to pursue things that are not good for them. It’s not the government’s job to police it if there’s no demonstrable, immediate threat to others. Without getting into whether consumption of porn is harmful for the people performing for their “entertainment,” is another matter. Still, it is clinically damaging to men and culturally destructive to relationships in general. Nearly every subdivision of government has public obscenity laws, even when they refuse to enforce them when school teachers violate them in the name of equity, inclusion, or some other cultural Marxist groomer nonsense.
And if it is sensible to make it illegal to expose minors to pornography in the real world (with the exception of government schools, it seems), why not online (except online libraries with grooming literature made available to children)? Or did Texas mean to regulate those as well?
Consider the possibility and then ask how the SCOTUS Maryland decision allowing adults to opt out their children from pubic school (not a typo), LGBTQ/Gender “lessons,” based on religious objections, might dovetail (a thought experiment for another day).
Generally speaking, I’m not here to tell adults what to do with their free time. The question in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton is whether states have a right to suppress a First Amendment right in the interest of protecting minors from pornography. The US Supreme Court has said, yes. It is not unreasonable to require providers of porn to do everything possible to ensure the people who consume their product are ar least 18-years of age.
The same is true for Alcohol, Tobacco, and all that other stuff we mentioned, whether consumed or not. It is obvious and culturally accepted that adults have a right to protect children from things for which they may or most certainly are not ready.
But privacy advocates are right to wonder what such an establishment might do with the information provided as proof (we have different laws for those who steal it or try). Free Speech absolutists are correct to ask where the First Amendment limits itself and the government to an age of majority (when other speech is protected). People in general are right to ask why pornography is protected speech at all. The First Amendment was crafted to preserve objections to things the government is doing (like making website prove age verification), asking these sorts of questions, or speaking unpopular thoughts out loud without fear of the state suppressing criticism or debate. Two adults pretending to enjoy each other’s intimate contact is rarely political, and adult-child contact or child-child contact of this nature is not protected expression (with a very few thinking it ought to be) despite the rise of such material in pubic schools – still not a typo.
Minor-attracted persons in our Founders Day were lynched, saving us the need to pay someone to keep track of them and communicate this to parents who are then expected to protect their children from these predators or who think the state should despite States (like my own) looking the other way at minor-attracted persons in their employ engaging in sexual acts with children in their care? The state hardly seems a sensible arbiter, even after it pretends to care by allowing the abused to sue it for compensation paid by taxpayers. Yet, the majority of voters believe that the State is the right place, and repeatedly give it power to act in their name.
A lot is going on, and yet the issue of both free speech and access or control of easily recognizable “adult material” remains inadequately addressed. If public schools can expose children to stuff of a sexual nature (coyly dressed in cartoon caricatures or disgusted as tolernac rebuilding exercises, knowing they are underage why make online porn sites jump through hoops to prevent anything similar?
The correct answer ought to be that pubic schools (still not a typo) do not have this right, given all we know, and that it is not just an issue of ensuring parents can opt out while inattentive adults or too attentive ones allow or encourage ideologues to sexually confuse kids with no genuine concept of sexuality of any sort.
Maybe the answer is that Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton reminds us that we should be prosecuting “educators” and administrators in government school systems, violating local obscenity laws like anyone else. We wouldn’t want to discriminate and only charge state employees in youth detention centers who groomed their captured audience and then led them on a path that would mentally and physically scar them for life.
Do we have a Supreme Court case on that coming up anytime soon?
