Some folks go to Hooters for the wings, or buy Playboy for the articles. Others, like sitting Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, would like to browse Pornhub for its enlightening essays.
At least that’s what he longs to see on the porn megasite, if his comments today in the hearing of Free Speech Coalition et al. v. Paxton are any indication.
The bizarre challenge came during an exchange with an attorney for the Free Speech Coalition — a group representing the porn industry, essentially — regarding the age verification systems that some states have been deploying on pornography sites.
“What percentage of the material on [Pornhub] is not obscene to children?” asked Alito.
“Well, Your Honor, if we’re talking about the youngest minors, I would agree that most of it is,” the attorney responded. “And that is how we read the law.”
“Is it like the old Playboy magazine,” the conservative justice pressed, perhaps a little too specifically, where “you have essays by the modern-day equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr?”
“Not in that sense, but in the sense you have wellness posts about women recovering from hysterectomies and how they can enjoy sex,” the attorney offered, presumably alluding to the streaming smut giant’s foray into sexual wellness content. “That’s on there.”
For obvious reasons, the exchange was relentlessly clowned on (as a point of fact, over the years Pornhub creators have dabbled in everything from erotic literature readings to non-sexual educational material.)
“Working out a scenario where Pornhub has to launch a prestigious monthly print magazine in order to stay online in Tennessee,” quipped journalist David Roth. “This is how we bring the business back: ransoming access to stepsister-stuck-in-washing-machine content with long-form literary criticism and Malcolm Harris book excerpts.”
Publishing industry strategems aside, Paxton is an important case with potentially massive ramifications for some increasingly marginalized groups in society. It’s an examination of a Texas state bill known as HB 1181, which requires any porn website to take steps to verify the age of its users in the state.
In mainstream media, the case is billed as a “1st Amendment vs Regulatory Tyranny” debate — porn companies on one side, conservative censors on the other — once again posing the question of “what kind of free speech are right wingers actually interested in?”
The reality is more nuanced. What often isn’t addressed in surface-level debates are the implications bills like this have on LGBTQ+ individuals, whose speech is increasingly included in conservative definitions of what constitutes “pornography”. Paxton opens the potential for a federal crackdown on anything that deviates from conservative family values — from queer literature to sexual health material to Alito’s beloved literary essays.
“It’s part of a broader crackdown on disfavored ‘pornographic’ speech from the right, which coincidentally includes LGBTQ people,” wrote queer journalist Gwen Howerton.
That in mind, Alito’s colorful questions take on a more sinister tone. The conservatives are essentially trying to establish that online pornographic content — and anything made to fall into that umbrella — is somehow filthier and less deserving of 1st amendment protection than his nostalgic nudie mags.
While the American porn industry leaves a lot to be desired — and is almost certainly calling out for labor reforms — look no further than the infamous Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act to see how overzealous regulation can hurt the most vulnerable Americans far more than it helps them.
