Democrats Should Become the Pro-Porn PartyChina wrote: Sat May 10, 2025 9:30 pmYou've got to hand it to them: GOP wants to restrict porn
A pair of congressional Republicans have introduced new legislation that would enlist the federal government in the latest target in the conservative war against free speech: banning online porn.
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois are behind the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act. The law would redefine obscenity as it is currently defined at the federal level by the Communications Act of 1934 and amend the 1973 Supreme Court decision defining pornography known as the “Miller Test.” It's a three-pronged test to decide if something is obscene: Does the material appeal to prurient interests, is it patently offensive, and does it lack serious value?
“Obscenity isn’t protected by the First Amendment, but hazy and unenforceable legal definitions have allowed extreme pornography to saturate American society and reach countless children,” Lee told the conservative Daily Caller.
Ironically, the Republicans are presenting their legislation as a measure to protect children but gave an exclusive advance preview of the bill to the Daily Caller. The Daily Caller has been notorious over the years for making light of child sexual abuse—when it isn’t publishing white supremacists or conspiracy theories.
The GOP bill would redefine the federal definition of obscenity and task federal officials with shutting down the transmission of porn across state lines.
The federal courts have traditionally found that pornography is constitutionally protected free speech under the First Amendment, and that transmitting content over state lines does not trigger standards surrounding “obscenity.”
But the proposed law is in line with ongoing Republican attacks on free speech.
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An immodest proposal.
I have many thoughts on how the Democratic Party might start to win back young men who have abandoned the party for fascism. None of them involve abandoning women’s rights, women’s leadership, or the LGBTQ community. But one of my suggestions is that the Democrats should embrace pornography and other examples of sexiness and smut under the umbrella of free speech.
Democrats must be the party of free speech and artistic expression. That is the liberal position. Republicans have hijacked the free speech issue, but the only free speech conservatives actually believe in is the “freedom” to shout racist and sexist crap online. That argument works on certain types of men—men who think using slurs makes them “edgy” and counterculture. Men who get uncomfortable when they don’t know the right thing to say. Men who don’t know how to talk to women.
But using a person’s preferred pronouns or swallowing a racial insult in your throat is not actually a free speech issue: It’s a human decency issue. The government does not fine you if you say the n-word, nor does it prevent you from getting a date just because you talk like a dude who is one rejection text away from becoming a mass shooter. Republicans are not protecting incels from government overreach; they’re protecting them from the social consequences of their beliefs.
Now, to be clear, pornography is viewed and enjoyed by all sorts of people, male and female, gay and straight, trans and cis. Indeed, one of the highest, best uses of porn (I can’t believe I just wrote that) is that it helps young people figure out what they’re actually into. Sex-positive porn enjoyers are not a political demographic the Democrats generally have a problem with.
Young, cishetero men who like jerking off to boobs the size of back problems are. They have been led to believe that Republicans are the protectors of free speech in this country. Some of those guys don’t care about free speech: They vote Republican because Republicans support their desire to treat real-life women like the sex objects of their fantasies. There’s nothing that can be done to save these people.
But Democrats can speak to people who honestly believe that freedom of thought and expression are under attack in this country, because it is under attack—from Republicans. You might not be able to convince a cishetero white guy that “Free Palestine” flags are germane to his free speech concerns, but you might convince him that porn is.
That’s because pornography is an actual free speech issue. So is smut. So is obscenity. These are forms of free speech that conservatives and Republicans in the government are constantly trying to regulate. There is no way that a young male interested in downloading some “not safe for work” content should be under the impression that the Republican freaking Party are the people who are going to defend and protect this right to do so. Liberals are the people who are supposed to be at the vanguard of free expression when it comes to sexy time. Democrats should be exposing the fundamental Republican hypocrisy of treating PornHub like a sin but Donald Trump like a god. And they can do that by loudly and proudly defending people’s rights to access PornHub (or whatever the kids are using these days).
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