If the state can impose tough restrictions on a right, including criminal and age limitations for one enumerated constitutional right (the second) why can't it impose it for the first?
This particular attempt to do so was found to be unconstitutional because the details of the limits it imposed were, according to the court, much too broad.
Generally to impose limits on a Constitutional right there has to be some legitimate compelling state interest to justify it and the limits have to be narrowly tailored to avoid limiting the right more than is necessary for that.
More details in the court's decision, which is linked to in the article. The court goes into great detail to explain what is allowed and how the Texas law goes beyond that.
- ID required
- a half hour or more background check by a licensed dealer
- while it can be purchased online, said dealer must physically be present to hand possession of the material
- A prohibition to certain material, country wide
- individual states impose further restrictions on the material.
Im sorry, but just as I see no reason why an 11 year old should walk out of a store with a firearm, I also dont see a compelling reason why an 11 year old (the average age of a first time porn user) should freely be allowed to watch a woman be savagely sodomized by a group of men as is the case on a typical porn site's homepage.
EDIT: Oh, and states should be allowed to make databases of porn consumer's preferences and habitually leak them for their neighbors to know, just like NY did
It was lathered in sarcasm, in that I also believe that many (not all) of the 2A restrictions are unconstitutional and should be lifted. The sarcasm a rhetorical device highlighting how we allow pre-teens to view terrible images of women being, essentially, raped but have age restrictions on firearms (and alcohol and tobacco) beyond the age of emancipation.
"The problem, in short, is that the law targets websites as a whole, rather than at the level of the individual page or subdomain"
Basically, this law would do nothing to prevent minors from accessing porn. It would just single out porn companies that are based/operate in the USA. And would only prevent direct access to them. Search engine results, visual search, metadata based content linking/recommendations, etc. are completely out of the scope.
It also would not apply to any social media sites that carry less than 33% porn content. So basically you could still go to X or Reddit and search for porn there too. Even r/pornhub for pornhub reposts.
It does not apply to apps that do search porn through API calls to porn sites that can be easily installed from the appstores.
Want to actually regulate this stuff? Make all internet connection capable devices be verifiable at the hardware level. Make it so apart from logging in to Google/Apple you have to also log in with a government issued ID through your ISP to some kind of verification portal/account. And link that verification to government developed software running within the device's OS which would block functionalities and can't be turned off/blocked without the device completely freezing.
Want a less draconian/90% solution? Make the top 3 search engines(Google, Bing, Yahoo) and the top 5 social media sites that carry porn (X, Reddit, Facebook, etc.) block access to pornographic content through Government issued ID verification.
Good luck with actually enforcing any of those though.
And I would say workarounds are within reach of the average teenager. Mainly in the 90% solution. Just change the search engine.
Epic straw man? Perhaps?
Nowhere in the ruling is any compelling reason claimed for what you just described.
And making Pornhub less private for adults won’t stop children from online searching for “woman savagely sodomized”.
Speech limits need to at least effectively limit something, if they are going to chill adults access to free speech, among other hurdles, or they are unconstitutional.
Avoiding murder is a pretty compelling reason to restrict rights; encouraging prudery not so much.