Today’s decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton is a direct blow to the free speech rights of adults. The Court ruled that “no person—adult or child—has a First Amendment right to access speech that is obscene to minors without first submitting proof of age.” This ruling allows states to enact onerous age-verification rules that will block adults from accessing lawful speech, curtail their ability to be anonymous, and jeopardize their data security and privacy. These are real and immense burdens on adults, and the Court was wrong to ignore them in upholding Texas’ law.
I know this is a joke, but I would just like to take this opportunity to relate what I consider to be an interesting historical fact.
Many Americans think that Australia was the only British penal colony, and that America was founded by Puritans, Quakers and the like. In fact Brittan was sending prisoners the North America well before they started using Australia after the revolutionary war. From 1610 to 1766 Brittan sent between 50-120,000 prisoners to America. In 1717 with the passage of the Transportation Act and continuing up until 1776, Brittan sent between 30,000 and 50,000 prisoners and ‘indentured servants’ to America, most of whom were political prisoners. I’m sure that having such a large number of people persecuted for their beliefs by Brittan and shipped off to a foreign land had nothing to do with the colonists declaring independence.
Granted when they did start shipping prisoners to Australia (1787 to 1868), they ended up sending quite a few more there, approx 162,000, but still the U.S. can proudly claim to come from Outlaws, just like the Aussies :)