Texas has always had a talent for turning its prudish hang-ups into law, but the latest stroke (pun intended) of genius comes courtesy of Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. In case you missed it: the Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, gave the thumbs-up to a Texas law requiring porn websites to check IDs before you can get your rocks off. You want Pornhub? Show your papers. RedTube? Driver’s license, please. SpankBang? Well, first you’ll need to create a state-approved jerk-off dossier.

The ruling was cloaked in the usual “protect the children” rhetoric, as if teens in 2025 aren’t already airdropping hentai GIFs to each other between math class and homeroom. The basic argument is that minors shouldn’t be looking at porn. Which sounds noble, until you ask: what exactly is the point of trying to stop a kid with a boner from seeing naked people?

Here’s a fun fact conservatives can’t wrap their heads around: puberty means horniness. Fourteen-year-olds don’t sprout erections because Pornhub taught them how. They sprout erections because biology strapped a hormonal flamethrower to their crotch. You can stick as many laws, filters, and “think of the children” speeches as you want between a teenager and a porn site, and it won’t change the fact that his dick is standing at attention like a parade rifle. The question isn’t whether he’ll rub one out. The question is what he’ll rub it out to.

So ask yourself: is repressing that natural instinct actually a good idea? What happens when the outlet isn’t Pornhub but his little stepsister? You can clutch your pearls all you want, but history tells us sexual repression doesn’t turn kids into saints — it turns them into predators. The Catholic Church should have put this in a PowerPoint by now.

Meanwhile, all available evidence says porn consumption is not some gateway drug to rape, incest, or donkey shows in Juárez. For most people, porn ends not with violent crime but with laying on the couch half-asleep while cum dries on your belly and YouTube autoplay rolls into a Minecraft tutorial. It’s pathetic, maybe. It’s lazy, sure. But it’s not criminal. The vast majority of guys who grew up jerking it to internet porn didn’t graduate into sex offenders — they graduated into guys who occasionally watch too much MILF porn and eat Hot Pockets at 1 a.m. That’s not “social decay.” That’s Tuesday in America.

But Texas lawmakers can’t let biology be biology. No, they’d rather create a surveillance state for erections. By forcing ID verification, they’re not just cock-blocking teens — they’re building a system that keeps tabs on everyone’s porn habits. Congratulations, citizen: your spanking preferences are now data points in a government-blessed database. Imagine your browsing history subpoenaed in divorce court: “Mr. Johnson, it says here you watched ‘Goth Babysitter Gangbang’ at 2:37 a.m. on a work night. Care to explain to the jury?”

And let’s not forget the hypocrisy. These are the same people who spent decades shrieking about “freedom” and “government overreach.” They practically burned their masks on the steps of Target because a pandemic asked them to cover their noses. But when it comes to what you do with your dick in the privacy of your home? Suddenly, IDs, monitoring, and restrictions are totally fine. Nothing says “limited government” like a cop rifling through your Pornhub favorites list.

The real tragedy here isn’t even the privacy nightmare. It’s the sheer pointlessness of the whole thing. Kids already find workarounds. VPNs, mirror sites, Discord servers, Telegram groups — you think Generation TikTok is going to be stumped by an age-verification screen? Please. The only people this law will reliably screw are adults who don’t want to hand their driver’s license to a porn company that probably has worse cybersecurity than Arby’s.

So here’s the reality Texas doesn’t want to face: teens jerk off. Adults jerk off. Everybody jerks off. Porn is the most universal outlet for that instinct we’ve invented. Trying to criminalize it or bureaucratize it doesn’t stop the boners. It just makes life harder for the rest of us. Which, if you’re a Texas Republican, may actually be the point.

Because deep down, it’s not about the kids. It’s never about the kids. It’s about controlling bodies, controlling pleasure, and pretending that natural human instincts are dirty sins that need to be shamed into silence. The boner police don’t care if their laws make teenagers less safe, or if they erode free speech protections. They care about drawing moral lines in the sand and making sure you know who’s holding the ruler.

And if that means your ID and jerk-off habits end up in a government file cabinet next to your tax returns? Well, that’s just the price of “freedom.”