What consenting 'adults' want to do in the privacy of their own home, is (for the most part) their business. However, KEEP OUR CHILDREN OUT OF IT!

By Ricky Schroder February 14, 2024 at 1:02pm

Children are being exposed to porn at an alarming rate, and the age gets younger every time a new study is completed.

According to a 2005 U.K. study, 93 percent of boys were exposed to porn during their teenage years, some as early as age 9. An even more alarming aspect of this is less than a quarter of that percentage intentionally sought it out.

The nonprofit organization that I head, the Reel American Heroes Foundation, has been pushing back against the damage done by pornography — especially to our children. We call our special project the Council on Pornography Reform.

Our first major project was leading a coalition of nonprofit organizations in filing an amicus brief in September in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to support Texas’ age verification law.

That law, Texas House Bill 1181, requires companies that produce or distribute pornographic material to have age-verification capability to ensure that the companies do not distribute their material to minors.

Predictably, online pornographers filed suit against Texas, and the district court enjoined the law just before it was to go into effect. When the pornographers brought the matter to the 5th Circuit, that court stayed the injunction.

There were only two amicus briefs filed. Our brief asked the court to uphold the law based on the original meaning of the First Amendment. The other brief was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and other leftist groups supporting the pornographers’ effort to strike down the law.

Oral arguments were heard on Oct. 4, and the matter is now pending before the 5th Circuit as Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton.

A strangely named website — “techdirt” — launched a counterattack against our brief. It claimed that our brief stated that the First Amendment only protects “political speech.” It did no such thing. But it did establish what the First Amendment does not protect — pornography.

The article claimed that buried in the First Amendment are “implied rights of expression” and these rights can be found in “existing case law.” The article showed some irritation that we referenced the Holy Bible in our brief, but we cannot think of any source of authority more important. In any event, we thank techdirt for linking to our brief so that readers can see for themselves what we actually stated.

The First Amendment protects “the freedom of speech,” not just anything that may be spoken. The use of the definite article “the” shows that free speech was an established concept with a historical meaning drawn from common law in England and the early history of the colonies. Even the Supreme Court once admitted that “acts of gross and open indecency or obscenity, injurious to public morals, are indictable at common law.”

So obscenity was not protected — it was criminalized. This was true throughout the colonies, and after the nation was formed, obscenity was criminalized throughout the states. This was the understanding of “the freedom of speech” as used by James Madison and the framers of the First Amendment.

As founding dean of Regent Law School Herbert W. Titus explained, the Supreme Court “had never found the First Amendment remotely relevant to the constitutionality of a federal or state obscenity law.”

But the tide began to turn when the Supreme Court ignored the text of the First Amendment, conflated “speech” and “press,” and invented a new term with no established meaning — “freedom of expression.” The courts then took it upon themselves to rule that all manner of obscenity and indecency — including nude dancing — were protected under that newly crafted “freedom of expression.”

Along the way, the court somehow distinguished between “obscenity” and “indecency,” which previously had always been viewed as synonyms. The court came up with vague tests like “appealing to prurient interests.”