Porn and the Parens Patriae

Today in First Things, we argue that our society cannot leave parents to fight porn alone

Today, my colleague Clare Morell and I are live at First Things with “Parents Can’t Fight Porn Alone.” The article, from the forthcoming February issue of the journal, speaks directly to the case that comes before the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. That case revolves around two basic questions:

1. Is pornography bad for kids?

2. Is there a better way to protect them than age verification?

Almost no one disputes the answer to the first question, not even the plaintiffs in this case, a porn-industry lobbying group. They may not admit just how bad, but they will concede what our courts have always maintained: that our states have a compelling interest to protect children from this obscene content—most of which is worse than I think most parents can possibly imagine. (If you have a strong stomach and an hour on your hands, I highly commend to you Texas’s meticulously-argued brief in the case.)

The second question, of course, is more technically complex. In theory there could be any number of ways of protecting children from pornography online; one could always try the Amish option and not let kids online at all—and I’m only half joking about that. In reality, though, solutions generally boil down to two basic options: a) age verification, and b) parental controls. Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive; obviously parents should seek to control what their kids see and do online, but the question is whether the state should leave the task solely to parents, or whether, as the parens patriae, our political leaders also have a responsibility to protect our nation’s children.

It's worth noting that, in the brick-and-mortar world, we usually don’t think twice about this partnership. Should kids have alcohol? Probably not. Tobacco? No. Firearms? Uh-uh. Most parents would confiscate any of these if they found their children in possession. But most parents are quite grateful that they don’t have to worry about this on a nightly basis; their twelve-year-olds aren’t coming home from the convenience store with a bottle of tequila and a pack of cigarettes. Why? Because storekeepers are legally required to be gatekeepers. Not so in the digital world.

It is only because of such laws that the task of parenting is made manageable—or used to be. Without them, it would be a brutal, exhausting war between parents and children fought on every conceivable battle line, with a permissive society granting carte blanche to minors and telling parents, “Oh, don’t worry, you can have them opt out if you want.”

But of course, this is exactly what we have done in the digital realm—even as we’ve encouraged kids to spend most of their time there, rather than in the age-gated physical world. Is it any wonder, then, that parents are burned out and exhausted, enough to warrant a surgeon general’s warning last summer?

So why do we find ourselves in this situation? At face value, it seems strange to say that a kid can’t enter a strip club with 10 performers, but can enter one with 10,000. Our current legal landscape is the product of a closely-divided 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court twenty-one years ago, Ashcroft v. ACLU. In that case, five justices stated a preference for parental controls over age verification based on two factual premises:

1) age verification online posed significant privacy concerns that didn’t apply in the brick-and-mortar world, since the checkout clerk at the adult store just glances at your ID, but the adult website, presumably, stores it in a hackable database.

2) content filtering software works just fine.

The first premise was true enough then, but simply is not anymore, as many have pointed out in relation to the current case. In fact, online AV is now more private than offline AV.

The second premise was false already in 2004, as my own parents can attest. It’s complete poppycock today, as I and any number of parents can attest.

In our article in First Things, loosely adapted from the amicus curiae brief we contributed to, we point out several fundamental flaws with the current filtering regime. For one, there are now simply too many portals to the internet in the typical American home for the average (or even the above-average) parent to keep up with. And since all digital architecture has been designed to be unlimited access by default, most filtering solutions are quite labor-intensive, not to mention glitchy, unreliable, and prone to software conflicts. In our home, my wife is a full-time stay-at-home mom, and invests hours each week managing our family’s content filters. I’m sure someone might come along and tell us there’s a simpler and more effective solution, but the fact that we haven’t found it yet hasn’t been for lack of trying!

Most parents, of course, do not dedicate such time or expertise; some perhaps don’t care, but most perhaps are simply confused, overwhelmed, and overworked—imagine the challenges facing a single parent working full-time who wants to keep her kids safe online! This poses a double problem worthy of the state’s concern: first, many children are left unprotected through no fault of their own, doomed to suffer harms that are sometimes lifelong. Second, the fact that many children are walking around with portable porn hubs in their pockets means that the best efforts of even the most vigilant parents are likely to be defeated by their kids’ friends.

In other words, as we write in our conclusion,

“The digital ecosystem poses an urgent collective action problem, and we cannot ask parents to shoulder the full burden of bringing children safely to adulthood. Nor can we leave the children of less attentive parents unprotected. It is the responsibility of the state, as the parens patriae, to remove the most serious threats to children. Within a properly walled garden of childhood, parents should have the right and freedom to determine what kinds of plants to cultivate. We do them no favors by giving them the ‘right’ to decide which wolves should roam there.”

I hope you’ll read the whole thing, share it around, and MAKE SOME NOISE on social media about this important case!

Other Newly Published

• “Remaining in Neverland” (WORLD Opinions): In my latest column for WORLD, I reflect on the lessons of a recent Wall Street Journal article, “What Happens When a Whole Generation Never Grows Up?” Are more kids failing to marry, failing to have kids, failing even to leave their parents’ basements because the economy is bad? Well, economic factors are relevant, particularly surging home prices. But more significant is a culture of “keeping one’s options open,” often one enabled by parents themselves, which has created an entire generation unable to use their freedom for any kind of meaningful commitment.

• “Christian Freedom vs. Worldly License” (Issues, etc.): In this podcast interview with a prominent Lutheran media outlet, I introduce my new book, Called to Freedom. I explain how a confused understanding of freedom is fracturing our churches and enervating our culture, and how a recovery of the spiritual heart of liberty can put us back on the right track.

Coming down the Pipe

Nota bene: one attentive reader has expressed the concern that the expression is normally “coming down the pike.” True enough, and yet publishers tend to speak of a “content pipeline.” Hence, if “coming down the pipe” isn’t yet a proper idiom, I intend to make it one.

• Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton: Next Tuesday I’ll be joining a distinguished panel at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation to discuss the Paxton case: why the case is so important, what the legal issues at stake are, and how we hope the Court will rule. The event will be livestreamed at 1:00 PM; you can register here. On Wednesday I’ll be speaking at a rally organized by the American Principles Project on the Supreme Court steps along with more than twenty other scholars, activists, and victims of pornography. Please join us if you’re in the area (8:30-10:30 AM, in front of the Court)!

• (with Clare Morell and Emma Waters) “Stop Hacking the Human Person” (The New Atlantis): This extremely important essay, which I’m very excited to be a part of, is slated to publish at The New Atlantis later this month. In it, we offer a comprehensive view of how we have allowed technology to develop in ways that, rather than unlocking human potential and healing human hurts, instead “hacks” the human person, short-circuiting our natural functions in order to hijack our desires. We show how this “hacking” mentality is operative at every stage of human development, from gamete to grave, and is the product above all of a failure of political economy, one that conservatives must redress soon if we are to protect the family and secure our future.

• “Unmaking the Digital Web”: After countless hours spent reading, annotating, typing up notes, and jotting down thoughts on Anton Barba-Kay’s rich and provocative A Web of Our Own Making, I finally last week submitted my 8,000-word review essay to American Affairs. The best writers bring out the best in our own thinking and writing, and I like to think that was the case here for my review, but you can judge for yourself when it publishes this spring.

• Essays on Freedom: In conjunction with my book launch, I have written/adapted essays on different aspects of freedom for three leading Christian publications, The Gospel Coalition (focusing on spiritual and moral freedom), Mere Orthodoxy (focusing on political freedom), and Comment (focusing on economic freedom). Look for all these to publish in the next few weeks.

• Podcast Appearances: I’ve recently recorded podcast interviews from The London Lyceum, That’ll Preach, Kingdom and Culture, the ISI Podcast, and Alastair’s Adversaria. All five podcasts were interviews about Called to Freedom, but each of them went in different directions highlighting different themes, and they were all fun conversations where I enjoyed fleshing out key ideas. The interview with Kingdom and Culture, even included a bonus extra interview episode on AI and my forthcoming essay, “Stop Hacking the Human Person.” Each should release over the next week, and I’ll link them all here when they do.

• Called to Freedom: Retrieving Christian Liberty in an Age of License: My book itself releases next week. You can still get a pre-order discounting by ordering via this link!

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