Updated @ 3 pm CDT: Seems the Tennessee AG, one Johnathan Skrmetti, thinks he’s some form of a latter day Geo. Wallace. He isn’t. He’s just an impotent old… loon. End update.
As expected, Tennessee cannot so restrict freedoms of speech and expression. So says this 70 page legal opinion.
This is an able federal court judge doing his level best to explain to hard right supposed “X-tians” in plain English why what they attempted is… deeply Un-American.
…Freedom of speech is not just about speech. It is also about the right to debate with fellow citizens on self-government, to discover the truth in the marketplace of ideas, to express one’s identity, and to realize self-fulfillment in a free society.
That freedom is of first importance to many Americans such that the United States Supreme Court has relaxed procedural requirements for citizens to vindicate their right to freedom of speech, while making it harder for the government to regulate it [footnotes omitted]….
…“It is… well established that speech may not be prohibited because it concerns subjects affecting our sensibilities….”; Reno v. A.C.L.U., 521 U.S. 844, 874 (1997) (reaffirming that the First Amendment protects sexual expression which is indecent but not obscene)….
After considering the briefs and evidence presented at trial, the Court finds that — despite Tennessee’s compelling interest in protecting the psychological and physical wellbeing of children — the Adult Entertainment Act (“AEA”) is an UNCONSTITUTIONAL restriction on the freedom of speech and PERMANENTLY ENJOINS Defendant Steven Mulroy from enforcing the unconstitutional statute….
Exactly. Onward, grinning into the sunshine. People are again freed, here in this fragile experiment with ordered liberty, to dance in any costume they please, regardless of the largely accidental shape of their genitalia at birth.
Updated: In an ironic footnote, the Powerline boys are actively promoting and supporting (as is their right, in my America) a media project from DailyWire that pushes the agenda that there are only two genders, and the same are immutably assigned at birth by some “god”. This, they say, is a vital issue of free speech — to have a platform for this supposed divinely ordained message. Yet these same chuckleheads will never rise to oppose laws that purport to restrict very much the same sort of discussions on the other side of the question (like the now dead TN AEA). I might ask: What are they so deathly afraid of? That people might express themselves in ways that make these old geezers… sexually excited — even though they are… dudes, underneath?! Is that all, boys? How is that… dangerous, to you?
In any event… Color me… unsurprised.
Smile….
नमस्ते
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