A Reagan Judge, the First Amendment, and the Eternal War Against Pornography

Caption from the image..."Incidentally, this portrait appears—along with other nudes—in a recent Supreme Court opinion. And now, of course, it appears on this website. Time to verify users’ ages (with government IDs or face scans) and post the state’s ridiculous “warnings”? Not quite: the site does not satisfy H.B. 1181’s “one-third . . . sexual material” content threshold. Still, that standard is vague."

I'm not against your opinion, I'm just pointing out that the image had a clear intent and relevance to the argument. It wasn't to show an example of our collective actual judgement of what pornography 'is' - anyone can Google that. Instead, the image provides a discrete example of how extreme puritanical views can turn classical, or indeed any nude art or scientific study images, into the pornographic class of safeguarded images.

As long as humans are humans, no oone will ever win this war. I, personally, think clothes are silly and am probably as far as you can get from a puritanical viewpoint. That said, I still believe the act of seeking a balance in a civilized manner through ongoing debate is not a worthless pursuit. Debates like this that seem eternal build the evolving infrastructure of our civilization.

They specifically were trying to illustrate how overly broad the law was, and

> the law they’re defending sweeps in paintings like Manet’s Olympia (1863)

It wasn't a bad attempt to "illustrate what pornography is", but an example of what most would agree is NOT porn, but would be effected.