The Supreme Court’s Ruling Practically Wipes Out Free Speech for Sex Writing Online

Am I now committing civil disobedience... just by keeping my personal literary website up as is?

Short Version:

Just in time for the Fourth of July, last week the Supreme Court effectively nullified the First Amendment for any writers, like me, who include sex scenes in their writing, intended for other adults.

Their ruling green-lighted a wave of state-level laws that allow meddling parents in conservative states to team up with personal injury lawyers to sue people across state lines for untold damages (literally millions of dollars in some current cases) for a single paragraph of sexually-explicit speech on writers’ personal websites, if the parents think might harm the precious eyes and ears of their little munchkins.

In fact, under the laws that the Supreme Court just upheld, prosecutors in Tennessee and South Dakota can even reach across state lines and prosecute writers on FELONY charges for a single paragraph of sexually-explicit writing on my site that they think "harmed" kids in their states, facing up to FIFTEEN years in prison, for failing to implement ID-checks on my dinky little free WordPress site.

(It's unlikely these interstate prosecutions would happen... but just the fact that they could happen, now approved and emboldened by the Supreme Court, means we are in an entirely new and different legal universe when it comes to mature-themed writing online. The First Amendment effectively no longer applies if your speech is online, contains sex scenes, and not behind an age verification wall.)

Now, under this new ruling, Free Speech Coalition vs. Paxton, if I don't ask for and verify your ID on my personal website before sharing even one paragraph of sexually-explicit writing with you, it could lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyers' bills and "damages" for the alleged "harm" it caused some kid in Texas or Tennessee whose parents didn't install the proper content filters on their kids' devices.

This has a massive "chilling effect" on legitimate online speech. Historically, government-induced "chilling effects" on speech have been seen as just as bad as outright bans.

But not any longer. This Supreme Court decision (ironically, written by the Supreme Court's raunchiest Justice ever, Long Dong Silver fan Clarence Thomas) has placed the Court's stamp of approval on conservative states' attempts to blanket writers and artists like me who produce edgy, explicit material, with the threat of massive civil (and in some cases, criminal) liability across state lines.

I'm not going to ask for your fucking ID on my site for you to see my writing. Not now, not ever. Thus, in my own little way, am I now committing civil disobedience, just by keeping my own personal website the way it always has been, free and open to the public, without ID checks?

Parents in conservative states: if you don’t want your kids reading my writing or watching my comedy, fine… then install a content blocker on your kids’ devices and add my site to it. Your kids can choose for themselves whether to have the purity of their minds corrupted by my writing and comedy when they're eighteen.

And to all the state prosecutors and judges and personal injury lawyers out there who might come after me for leaving my shitty little Wordpress personal site exactly as it is, without requiring you, my dear readers and comedy fans, to upload your IDs and scan your faces biometrically to access a few laughs on my site… I will turn every last word you utter into further comedy on my very site you’re attacking, and you will forever be memorialized comedically as the hypocritical jackasses that you are. ¹

For writers, artists, and creators: if you are at ALL involved with sharing sex-related content online (even sex education), I STRONGLY urge you to learn about this issue, and how to protect yourself. Conservative Christians are trying to eliminate ALL sexually-related speech online.

Start by reading the detailed version of my article below. And also read the Free Speech Coalition's FAQ about age verification. Then join the Free Speech Coalition, the main group fighting against censorship of sexually-themed content online. Learn how to protect yourself there.

There are many things going on in my country that I'm ashamed of now, but I still consider myself a proud American. And I feel that way largely because of our Constitution's First Amendment... the greatest protection for writers and artists ever enacted into law.

I will fight till my last day to keep the spirit of the First Amendment alive, even as this current Supreme Court does everything it can to erode it.

Detailed Version:

What I’ve written above may sound hyperbolic. However, once you look at the details of these laws, you see just how atrocious they are from a free speech perspective. The devil is in the details.

Consider a Tennessee law, one of twenty-four state-level laws requiring some form of ID-check for website visitors to access sexually-explicit content online or even non-sexualized nudity. This is the type of law the Supreme Court just affirmed in its new precedent.

The recent Tennessee law (Senate Bill 1792, in effect 1/1/25), makes it a Class C Felony—with a potential punishment of three to fifteen years in prison—if “content harmful to minors” comprises more than 33% of a website, and the website owner doesn’t employ technologically complex and privacy-invasive age verification methods.²

These charges can be pursued against any individual website owner living and hosting their site in any state, so long as the “content harmful to minors” was viewable online in Tennessee. Which means, now, no spicy artist in America is safe from (likely evangelical) Tennessee prosecutors. Not even this deranged comedian you’re reading now, based in California.

What, you ask, is “content harmful to minors”?

According to the Tennessee law, it is:

(A)(i) Text, audio, imagery, or video the average person, applying contemporary community standards and taking the material as a whole and with respect to minors of any age, would find sexually explicit and harmful or inappropriate for minors or designed to appeal to or pander to the prurient interest; or

(ii) Text, audio, imagery, or video that exploits, is devoted to, or principally consists of an actual, simulated, or animated display or depiction of any of the following:

(a) Pubic hair, vulva, vagina, penis, testicles, anus, or nipple of a human body;

(b) Pubic hair, vulva, vagina, penis, testicles, anus, or nipple of a fictitious character's body, or the parts of a fictitious character's body analogous or functionally equivalent to the aforementioned parts of the human body;

(c) Touching, caressing, fondling, or other sexual stimulation of human nipples, breasts, buttocks, anuses, or genitals, or the analogous or functionally equivalent parts of a fictitious character's body; or

(d) Sexual intercourse, masturbation, sodomy, bestiality, oral copulation, flagellation, excretory functions, exhibitions, or any other sexual act; and

(B) When taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors [emphasis added]³

As this definition makes clear, it applies to text as well as to imagery. I am firmly opposed to censorship of any medium. That said, I find censorship of text to be particularly egregious and shocking. As a writer, I focus on that here. (However, to be clear, I stand in solidarity with creators facing this type of censorship in any medium, including video, audio, and music.)

The law’s definition applies to virtually any verbal description or visual depiction of nudity, so long as a Tennessee judge or jury—likely from a rural, religiously conservative jurisdiction—decides that it lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.⁴

I’m a writer and comedian living in California. If my raunchy stories or comedy sets that I publish on my own website end up comprising over 33% of my website… and if I do not want to be liable for an interstate criminal prosecution emanating from Tennessee, facing the three-to-fifteen in a sweaty Tennessee prison, how can I avoid this risk?

Simple! I just need to implement a “reasonable age-verification method" on my own literary and comedic website before anyone can read my writing. What is a “reasonable age-verification method”?

(Feel free to skim or skip over the technical details in the next three block quotes—I’m just putting them here so you get how Kafkaesque these laws are for a simple little stoner writer and comedian like me, who barely knows how to install a WordPress plugin—let alone fancy ID-checks.)

So… in Tennessee, "Reasonable age-verification” involves:

(A) The matching of a photograph of the active user taken between the attempt to view content harmful to minors and the viewing of content harmful to minors, using the device by which the attempt to view content harmful to minors is being made, to the photograph on a valid form of identification issued by a state of the United States of America; or

(8) A commercially reasonable method relying on public or private transactional data to verify that the age of the person attempting to access the information is at least eighteen (18) years of age or older;

Furthermore, this age verification must occur during an “age-verified session.” What is that? It is:

the lesser of the session during which the active user's age was verified using a reasonable age-verification method or sixty (60) minutes from the time the active user's age was verified using a reasonable age- verification method;

In other words, I must now somehow track the amount of time each user spends on my site and require them to re-verify their age (by, for example, submitting a webcam photo of themselves along with a photo of their ID) every sixty minutes. If I ever get around to finishing my erotic novel and publishing it on my site, and if it takes five hours to read, a reader would need to submit their ID five times to read it.

Oh, and here’s the kicker. I need to “Retain at least seven (7) years of historical anonymized age-verification data,” which:

must include architectural diagrams illustrating the technological assets and logical processes by which the reasonable age-verification method is accomplished and data demonstrating a volume of reasonable age-verification method executions consistent with the overall volume of visits to the website;

Got that?

Fuck ‘Em, I’ll Just Have to Fight ‘Em

Suffice it to say, I’m not doing any of that shit on my dinky little free personal WordPress site. I wouldn’t even know how. I’m a writer, not a tech geek. If they come after me, fuck ‘em, I’ll fight ‘em.

I’ll either win (after ruinous legal fees), or go bankrupt from the civil penalties. And/or I’ll get to know Bubba, my new cellmate at Bledsoe County Correctional Complex in Pikeville, TN. I’m sure he’ll love my comedy. At least I can’t get prosecuted for raunchy comedy or writing in prison.

While it’s extremely unlikely I or anyone else would be extradited from California to Tennessee for non-violent speech-related charges… the simple fact that such a prosecution could happen now—and the Supreme Court has considered this and is totally fine with it—means we’ve crossed a Rubicon regarding free speech about sex in America.

There are now two laws standing on state books creating criminal liability across state lines for me in California, for publishing my writing, intended for adults, on my own personal website… and given that I will not be implementing insanely onerous, privacy-invasive, technically-complex and restrictive age-gating on my personal site, which would massively inconvenience you, my readers.

(I know you love my writing, but are you really going to scan your ID, upload a selfie, and submit to biometrics every hour to read it?)

What’s the second law I mentioned above? Just yesterday, South Dakota’s age verification law (House Bill 1053) went into effect, making it a Class 1 misdemeanor (punishable by a year in prison) for a first offence of publishing any material whatsoever, even one paragraph or image, deemed “harmful to minors.” A second offense is a Class 6 felony, punishable by up to two years in prison. The Supreme Court is totes cool with this.

To be clear, this is the first state age verification law to eliminate the exception for sites that contain less than 33% “harmful to minors” content. It creates potential civil and criminal liability for publishing a single paragraph of raunchy writing, or a single image “of the female breast with less than a full opaque covering or any portion thereof below the top of the nipple.” ⁵

(Note that, while these laws deem an image of a female nipple—the very source of our nourishment as infants!—as potentially “harmful to minors” or “obscene as to minors,” few of them deem any amount of gore, bloodshed, or violence as“harmful to minors.” Furthermore, obscenity law in the U.S. specifically excludes violence, focusing only on sex. In fact, in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 2011, the Supreme Court voted 7-2 to strike down attempts to ban the sale of violent video games to minors on free speech grounds! In his fiery majority opinion, Justice Scalia writes, “violence is not part of the obscenity that the Constitution permits to be regulated. . . . [S]peech about violence is not obscene.”)⁶

Again, I don’t think I’m likely to get prosecuted in or extradited to South Dakota for some explicit fiction scenes or raunchy comedy on my personal site.

However, all of the twenty-four state age verification laws (including those in Tennessee and South Dakota) contain a different type of provision—creating interstate civil liability—that freaks me the fuck out.

Erotic Ambulance Chasers

These laws have created civil causes of action that allow parents (with the help of personal injury firms now specializing in this) to sue individuals who publish “harmful to minors” material and who fail to implement the invasive ID systems mandated by the laws.

Right now, there’s a mom in Kansas suing four different porn sites for $14 million total because, she claims, her fourteen-year-old son accessed these porn sites 175 times, and is now badly traumatized. As the Free Speech Coalition reports:

Over a period of several months, [the son] allegedly accessed adult sites more than 175 times. The lawsuit claims that adult sites are liable for damages of approximately $75,000 for [each] time [he] visited a site. While Kansas law provides statutory damages of $50,000 for violations of the law, plaintiffs are asking for additional damages citing “pain, suffering, disability, disfigurement and mental anguish,” “psychological injury,” “past and future loss of enjoyment and pleasure of living,” and “past and future necessary medical expenses.”

These bottom-feeder lawsuits are proliferating. They will likely focus on quick settlements because the lawyers and their plaintiffs know that defending against them can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So it’s usually cheaper to settle, even if the claim is totally bogus.

Since I’m not going to age-gate my private, free personal writing site, this means I could now be targeted in any number of frivolous interstate private lawsuits from twenty-four states across the nation, initiated by conservative parents claiming their kid accessed raunchy writing or comedy on my site. Some of these laws entitle parents to a minimum of $50,000 in “damages” per non-age-verified visit. (I knew my writing could be damaging to your mind… like smoke-a-joint damaging… but fifty grand damaging? Nah)

I’m willing to take some risks and fight bullshit laws and lawsuits if I have to. But that’s part of my ethos, and my family legacy. My father got arrested over eighty times in acts of non-violent civil disobedience on causes he cared about. I don’t have the same appetite for being arrested during protests that my dear old pops had…

Comedic Civil Disobedience

But I leaving up my dinky personal writing site, containing plenty of raunchy writing and comedy, exactly as it is, without readers having to upload ID to read my work or get a few laughs on my site. Is that now an act of literary civil disobedience?

Other indie writers, artists, and creators may not want to take the risk of the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages and legal fees that this patchwork of state laws imposes. Sharing indie creative work barely pays anyway. And now, in addition to earning jack shit in the age of piracy, creators also have to implement all kinds of expensive technology on our free sites, further restricting our hard-to-gain audiences, in order to avoid the risk of bottom-feeder civil lawsuits across state lines initiated by legions of erotic ambulance chasers?

Many indie creators of risqué content will probably just give up. It’s already hard enough trying to stay afloat as an indie artist or entertainer, and now we have to deal with this bullshit on top?

If these laws across the nation are not a “chilling effect” on free speech, I don’t know what is. From a First Amendment perspective, a serious chilling effect on protected speech—such as the government putting up major legal, regulatory, or financial hurdles to express oneself artistically—is considered almost as unacceptable as an outright ban.

The age verification laws don’t outright ban verbal descriptions or visual depictions of nudity or sex in literature, art, or entertainment. However, they place such over-the-top, wildly disproportionate limitations and financial and criminal risks on indie writers and comedians like me who post verbal descriptions of sex online (and all other creators of raunchy or adult content), these laws effectively function as bans, to anyone who doesn’t want to shoulder insane legal and financial risk.

Through the Backdoor

This is exactly what the instigators of the state-level age verification wave intended: to shut down all speech, art, and entertainment about sex online, turning the entire Internet into a G-rated zone.

In 2024, the Center for Climate Reporting secretly recorded Russell Vought, co-author of the infamous Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership report—and now a Trump official for the second time—in a wide-ranging discussion. Vought, a key early architect of the age verification laws, was caught saying on hidden camera:

We're always looking for what's the immediate fight leverage point that we can win, and win a debate that allows us the next fight to get more of the win than we could have.

For instance, right now we came up with an idea on pornography to make it so that the porn companies bear the liability for the underage use as opposed to the the person who visit it's the website getting to just certify that “I'm eighteen.”

We've got a number of states. that are passing this. And you know what happens is the porn company then says “we're not going to do business in your state.” Which of course is entirely what we were after. Right?

So we’re doing it from the backdoor, starting with the kids. We would have a national ban on pornography if we could. [Emphasis added]

Catch that word: “entirely.” For one of the age verification laws’ main architects, the strategy isn’t about protecting kids from entertainment intended for adults. It’s “entirely” about putting the companies that produce that content for adults out of business. The age verification laws are just the “backdoor” to a larger agenda—an agenda they stated clearly in their Mandate: “Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.”

With the Tennessee and South Dakota laws in place, they’re well on their way. “First, they came for the pornographers…” You might be fine with that. You might hate pornography. You might like hardcore porn banned yourself.

But no matter your opinion on porn, be advised: Republicans are now labeling anything and everything that has to do with sex, and LGBT+ issues, as “pornography” and “obscene” and “harmful to minors.”

Whatever type of literature or entertainment you do like that deals with sex is next on the chopping block, especially if it’s made by indie artists or entertainers, who will be snowed under by these risks. Whether it’s literature, erotica, romance novels, fine art, or raunchy humor—if it’s got nudity or sex, they’re going after it with these bullshit “harmful to minors” laws soon. And right now, they’re winning.

I think it’s fair to say that, with respect to online depictions of nudity or sex (written or visual) we effectively no longer have First Amendment. It’s gone. The Supreme Court has said that essentially no burden is too high to place on spicy writers, artists, and entertainers, even poor indie ones, in the name of protecting kids from bare female nipples.

***

Look, I understand parents are shocked by the flood hardcore porn their kids have access to. No one thinks this is good for kids. Certainly, I don’t. I found and watched VHS tapes of mainstream porn when I was 10, and I don’t think it was healthy for me. And that stuff was tame compared to what kids have access to today, right in their pockets—no VHS player required!

No one wants kids to see hardcore porn. Unfortunately, the vast majority of porn is on free pirate sites outside of the US. So these laws, which impact law-abiding US artists and companies only, will do NOTHING to keep kids from accessing unlimited free hard-core porn—not a single thing—since kids will still have access to unlimited porn from non-US, non-law-abiding piracy site.

Reducing a quantity of material (even a seemingly large quantity) from essentially infinite material doesn't change the state of play at all. The laws are 100% pure, solution-free grandstanding.

It seems the best parents can do (whether these laws are in place or not) is to install content blockers on their kids' devices as best they can, and (since kids are likely to see porn on other devices anyways) have honest conversations with them about how to think about what they might see, how to handle it emotionally, and how it differs from reality. No "age check" solution will ever work--unless you want to age-gate the entire Internet--because most porn sites stream pirated content, from foreign shores.

I would also ask parents to examine why they are so utterly freaked out about their kids seeing material about sex, but vastly less (or not at all) bothered by their kids watching so much violence in cartoons and movies, and actually play-enacting extreme violence in photo-realistic first-person shooter games. I’m not a parent, and I don’t have a clear answer about this discrepancy.

However, I do believe it is worth reflecting on. I hope I will be forgiven for saying that I find it challenging to empathaze with parents’ shock—shock!—at the thought of their kids seeing explicit sexuality on screen, when the very same parents don’t display anywhere near as much concern (and often none at all) about the effects on little Johnny or Sally playing photorealistic first-person shooter games, in which the kids immerse themselves and revel in the violent action, cruelly and casually blowing hundreds of characters to bits in gory spurts of brain and blood.

That’s not seriously harmful… but looking at two people giving (or pretending to give) each other physical pleasure (rather than physical violence) is seriously harmful? C’mon. There’s got to be some consistency here. I don’t know where the overall set-point on the dial of explicitness should be for kids’ viewing of violence and sexuality, and at what ages. But I do know that the set point for seeing violence and sexuality portrayed on screen should be set to roughly the same threshold of explicitness. (If not slightly more restrictive for violence.)

As opposed to the current state of affairs, in which the cultural and legal charge of “obscene as to minors” and “harmful to minors” kicks in at an extremely low dial reading for explicit depictions of sexuality, but not at all for any dial reading at all for explicitness in violence, not matter how gory (have you seen some of the horror films kids watch?)

At any rate, in the process of doing absolutely nothing to keep the Internet’s international flood of free, pirated hardcore porn away from kids, these age verification laws are massively curtailing the free speech rights of all writers, artists, or creators who want to talk openly about sexually-themed topics—and the rights of adults who want to be informed or entertained in some manner beyond G-rated material.

If you’re at all involved in producing any type of sexually-themed content (written or visual) I beseech you to join the Free Speech Coalition, which has been the main force fighting these laws and trying to protect us. They have a detailed FAQ about the age verification laws here. Protect yourself.

As Benjamin Franklin is reported to have said at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

Especially those of us who dare write about boobs hanging out and schlongs hanging down, in a world scared shitless of a nipple.

1. I would bet good money—if I had any—that nearly every male state politician who voted for these bills and every male prosecutor and judge enforcing them is jerkin’ to porn at least occassionally. And when they do, the porn they watch is likely not age-gated, because most porn is not age-gated and never will be. Instead, much to the detriment of the porn stars who act in it, and to the (often) indie producers who create it, most porn is available free on non-compliant pirate tube sites, frequently hosted faraway in places like Russia, China, and Ukraine.

In the likely case that Clarence Thomas—who wrote the Free Speech Coalition majority opinion—still sneaks a peek every once in a while at videos featuring the work of his favorite porn star Long Dong Silver’s contemporary counterparts, he is probably doing so on free, non-age-verified pirate sites. I’m sure Palantir has that data. Peter Thiel, can you help us out here?

2. Nearly all of the state age verification laws specify this threshold, that they only apply to websites featuring more than 33% content “harmful to minors.” As the Free Speech Coalition has pointed out, one of the many flaws of these laws is that it’s extremely vague about what, precisely, this 33% threshold means, and thus, it’s vague about who actually needs to comply with it. One-third of pages? Of word count? Of minutes of video? Of megabytes?

At any rate, the 33% threshold does (for now) make it less likely that social media sites—or individuals posting on social media sites—will be prosecuted. Or those with personal sites who only occasionally post racy content.

Here, however, I’m focusing on writers, such as myself, who have personal websites where we post a fair amount (possibly more than 33%) of spicy material.

And now, as if states are competing on militancy over this issue, South Dakota just broke ground by doing away with the 33% threshold, requiring age verification for even a single “harmful to minors” image, which could potentially include one image of a nude female breast. This absolutely puts anyone posting erotic content on social media, or even in a single post on one’s personal blog, liable to criminal and civil lawsuits emanating from South Dakota, no matter what state they live in.

3. This Tennessee law is—I believe—unique in "harmful to minors” and “obscene as to minors” laws because it effectively does away with the first two prongs of the Supreme Court’s 1973 three-pronged Miller Test, the reigning standard for determining what content is “obscene” and therefore lacking in First Amendment protections.

Most “harmful to minors” laws, such as the Texas law at issue in Free Speech Coalition, were written to withstand First Amendment challenges by using some version of the three-pronged Miller Test, modified to apply to whether the material in question is obscene “as to minors.” These prongs include (1) whether the material appeals to the “prurient interest” of minors (that is, whether it’s intended to arouse); (2) whether the material depicts genitals or sex acts in a “patently offensive” way with respect to minors; and (3) whether the work, taken as a whole, “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

This Tennessee law is notable in that it effectively eliminates these first two prongs. Per section (5)(ii)(b), any depiction of nudity whatsoever, even a single nude breast, can potentially be deemed “harmful to minors,” even if it doesn’t “appeal to the prurient interest” and it isn’t “patently offensive.”

In other words, with respect to work that contains any nudity whatsoever, even a single nude breast, the Tennessee law mandates just prong 3 of the Miller Test: whether the work lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors. It’s a one-pronged test.

Technically, this could criminalize the online publication of almost any image of nudity in art history—such as Michelangelo’s David, with David’s cock and balls hanging right out there—given that conservative judges in Tennessee are likely uninclined to see such explicit depictions as valuable for minors.

As Republican lawmakers have made clear (see the note below), they use circular reasoning to determine whether a work that contains nudity lacks “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” for minors. If it contains nudity (or even the slightest allusion to LGBT+ issues), it doesn’t. Therefore, it’s harmful to / obscene for minors.

4. In the context of these state age verification laws, no judges or juries have ruled yet on what content they consider “harmful to minors,” or “obscene as to minors,” another phrase commonly used in the bills.

However, across the nation, GOP lawmakers (and in particular, conservative school board officials) have made it abundantly clear that they view virtually any description or discussion of sex, sex education, and/or LGBT+ issues, including in books with widely recognized literary value, as “harmful” or “obscene” for minors.

The books most commonly banned or challenged in school and public libraries include Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, 1984 by George Orwell (the irony!), The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (more irony!) and my favorite book of my adolescence, The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (heavens, I would have been so much better off had the government protected me, at age fifteen, from Holden Caulfield’s potty mouth!)

Last year, Idaho passed House Bill 710, which allows parents to sue public libraries for uncapped damages if the library does not separate any and all books that parents might deem “obscene” or “harmful to minors” (including, in practice, any depiction of nudity or sex whatsoever, no matter how literary) into an “adults only” sections. (Will they have curtains, as in 1980s video rental stores)?

The public library in rural Donnelly, Idaho, at only 1,024 square feet, had no practical way to create an enforceable “adults only” section and no budget to defend against lawsuits. Therefore, to comply with the law, they decided to make the entire library for adults only. The library has banned minors from entering the library (even to use the bathroom) unless they are accompanied by an adult, or holding a waiver from their parents.

It’s 2025 in America, and kids are being banned from public libraries because they might read about sex.

In 2022 in Athens, Tennessee, one county over from where the Scopes Monkey Trial played out exactly a century ago, the McMinn County Board of Education voted 10-0 to remove the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman from the eighth-grade curriculum about the Holocaust.

The novel—hailed by the Wall Street Journal as “the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust”—portrays Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. The book was removed because it contains a drawing of the author’s mother (as a mouse) nude in the bathtub after slitting her wrists. And also, because it contains the words “bitch” and “god damn.” Apparently, eighth graders are old enough to learn about the murder of six million Jews, but not if that genocide involves the phrase “god damn” or naked (mouse) breasts.

5. The requirement, in most state age verification laws, that the site in question contain “over 33% content harmful to minors” likely shields social media platforms from those state laws. And it likely shields erotic models, porn creators and performers, and other sex workers who post topless or sexually-explicit photos on social media platforms that allow it, like X/Twitter, from the same laws.

However, the new South Dakota law, which eliminates the 33% threshold, potentially renders even single social media posts (viewable in South Dakota) subject to interstate criminal and civil lawsuits originating from South Dakota. No one is safe. Erotic content creators, sex educators, and sex workers in any state in the U.S.: keep on top of the issue and learn how to protect yourself at the Free Speech Coalition.

6. Scalia continues, in grisly detail:

California’s argument would fare better if there were a longstanding tradition in this country of specially restricting children’s access to depictions of violence, but there is none. Certainly the books we give children to read—or read to them when they are younger—contain no shortage of gore. Grimm’s Fairy Tales, for example, are grim indeed. As her just deserts for trying to poison Snow White, the wicked queen is made to dance in red hot slippers “till she fell dead on the floor, a sad example of envy and jealousy.” The Complete Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales 198 (2006 ed.). Cinderella’s evil stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves. Id., at 95. And Hansel and Gretel (children!) kill their captor by baking her in an oven. Id., at 54.

High-school reading lists are full of similar fare. Homer’s Odysseus blinds Polyphemus the Cyclops by grinding out his eye with a heated stake. The Odyssey of Homer, Book IX, p. 125 (S. Butcher & A. Lang transls. 1909) (“Even so did we seize the fiery-pointed brand and whirled it round in his eye, and the blood flowed about the heated bar. And the breath of the flame singed his eyelids and brows all about, as the ball of the eye burnt away, and the roots thereof crackled in the flame”). In the Inferno, Dante and Virgil watch corrupt politicians struggle to stay submerged beneath a lake of boiling pitch, lest they be skewered by devils above the surface. Canto XXI, pp. 187–189 (A. Mandelbaum transl. Bantam Classic ed. 1982). And Golding’s Lord of the Flies recounts how a schoolboy called Piggy is savagely murdered by other children while marooned on an island. W. Golding, Lord of the Flies 208–209 (1997 ed.)

I have yet to see a convincing argument, by any lawmaker, judge, or anyone else, as to why reading about or seeing people murder and torture each is A-OK for minors to consume, while seeing people giving each other sexual pleasure—the activity that got most of us here—is “harmful” or “obscene.” In American parenting culture, it’s fine for kids to see (or, in video games, pull the trigger on) any quantity of bodily fluids if they splatter through bloody murder or torture. But if—God forbid!—kids see a splotch of body fluid that came about through mutual pleasure or loving touch, all of a sudden, the kids will be traumatized for life. Make it make sense.

My position is that if explicit depictions of violence are not harmful to or obscene for minors, then neither are explicit depictions of sex.

Neither should be regulated by the state. This is a matter for parents.

Parents should install content filters on their children’s devices, tailored to their own values and standards of age appropriateness for their own kids. (I proactively encourage parents to filter my raunchy writing and comedy right out. I don’t want your precious little angels getting their ears ruined by my foul mouth!)

And, since kids are likely to find or seek out violent and sexually explicit material anyway on other devices not controlled by their parents, parents should have frank discussions with their kids about how to think critically about and emotionally handle explicit media depictions of sex and violence that they may come across, and about how these depictions differ from reality.

No one thinks its healthy for kids to see hardcore porn. I certainly don’t (any more than I think it’s healthy for kids to see blood splattering everywhere.) Unfortunately, kids are going to see porn no matter what, since most porn is (much to the frustration of porn producers and actors) stolen and displayed free pirate content sites, usually hosted on foreign shores. These pirate sites will never comply with these laws, even if every American porn site does.

So what should you do? Install content filters where possible on your kids’ devices, and discuss with them what they’re likely to encounter somewhere or another.

Unfortunately, even if they were totally successful at getting all US porn sites to age gate their content, these state laws won’t do a single thing to keep your kids from seeing hardcore porn. The laws are a totally fake solution. They are 100% pure, solution-free grandstanding. But grandstanding not only doesn’t bring the benefits it promises—it sometimes also has severe costs. In this case, the cost is that these laws have effectively shredded the First Amendment for a whole swath of indie writers, artists, and entertainers, and for their wide-ranging adult audiences—audiences including, probably, at some point, you—in the process.