Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) July 7, 2025: According to the conservative NYT op-ed columnist David French, by a 6-to-3 vote the U.S. Supreme Court "upheld a Texas law that requires pornographic websites to 'use reasonable age verification methods' to make sure that their customers are at least 18 years old." See David French's column "One of the Worst Industries in the World Gets Its Comeuppance" (dated July 6, 2025) at The New York Times:
David French goes on to analyze and discuss the ruling not by discussing conservative "Justice Clarence Thomas's majority opinion," but by discussing liberal "Justice Elena Kagan's dissent."
NYT op-ed columnist David French is a lawyer who writes NYT columns "about law, culture, religion, and armed conflict." With regard to his religion, he is a conservative Protestant.
In David French's column "One of the Worst Industries in the World Gets Its Comeuppance," he makes it abundantly clear that he dislikes the porn industry ("One of the Worst Industries in the World"). However, because David French is a lawyer, he discussion of liberal Justice Elena Kagan's dissent is a bit technical, to say the least. Nevertheless, he says, "No one thinks that the Texas law will solve the problem of childhood exposure to porn. There are simply too many workarounds, including the use of virtual private networks, better known as V.P.N.s." Now, I admit that I know nothing about V.P.N.s. And because I am not a lawyer, I am not prepared to comment on the merits of liberal Justice Elena Kagan's dissent - or on David French's informed discussion of her dissent.
Moving on, I also noted that the lawyer Elie Mystal published an accessible article titled "Democrats Should become the Pro-Porn Party: A Modest Proposal" in The Nation:
Granted, we have two dominant political parties in the United States: (1) the Republican Party and (2) the Democratic Party. For years now, we have had culture wars between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives in the Republican Party have emerged as the anti-porn advocates. Their conservative anti-porn advocacy seems to lend itself to the culture-war ethos and call on liberals and progressives in the Democratic Party to become the "pro-porn party." However, in my judgment, the liberals and progressives in the Democratic Party are not likely to emerge as the pro-porn party - as Elie Mystal advocates in his "Modest Proposal."
Now, even though I have written about the Texas' law in my OEN article titled "Texas' War on Porn, and Robert Moore's Theory of the Archetypes of Maturity" (dated December 6, 2024; viewed 1,014 times as of July 7, 2025), I do not expect to see the Democratic Party emerge as the pro-porn party:
Rather, I expect that liberals and progressives in the democratic Party will continue to oppose conservative Republican measures against porn on a case-by-case basis as they emerge in the future - and I also expect that they will couch their objections to the proposed measures in carefully narrow terms.
You see, even in some of my deeply personal OEN articles in which I candidly discuss porn, I have invariably stipulated that I am discussing only heterosexual porn that is available free on the internet and in DVDs - and I have often further narrowed the scope of my discussion of porn to mom-son porn videos that are available free on the internet and in DVDs.
Yes, as I see it, the expression "pro-porn party" is a blanket term. And I am not convinced that liberals and progressives in the Democratic Party should adopt that blanket term.
But I now want to turn to certain other matters that the conservative lawyer David French and the liberal lawyer Elie Mystal do not discuss.
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