'No b*** j** for you': State House silences Republican for reading smut Democrats fought to keep in elementary schools



The Democratic deputy speaker of the Connecticut House silenced a Republican colleague during debate over the state budget on Monday, thereby proving her point: Some of the content in the Constitution State's public schools is far too obscene to be read even before a crowd of adults.

While important, Republican state Rep. Anne Dauphinais' concerns about pornographic content in elementary school libraries would normally be irrelevant to a state budget.

However, in an apparent effort to limit public scrutiny, Democratic lawmakers Trojan-horsed legislation into the Connecticut budget that would greatly restrict concerned parents' ability to have sexually graphic content, LGBT propaganda, and other inappropriate materials removed from school libraries.

'Parents are going to really have to pay attention to their own school libraries.'

In addition to painting resident "school library media specialists" as the experts on what content American children should consume, the legislation:

  • prohibits the removal, exclusion, or censoring of any book on the basis that "a person with a vested interest finds such book offensive";
  • prohibits the removal of content or the cancellation of library programs on the basis of "the origin, background or viewpoints expressed" therein;
  • demands that library materials and programs be excluded only for "pedagogical purposes or for professionally accepted standards of collection maintenance practices";
  • bars challengers of offensive content from favoring or disfavoring "any group based on protected characteristics";
  • requires challengers to file their grievances with a school principal and provide their name, address, and telephone number;
  • requires a review committee, weighed heavy with educational personnel, including a librarian and a teacher, to make the determination; and
  • requires the offensive material to remain available in the school library until a final decision is made.

In the wake of the controversial budget's passage on party-line votes and Gov. Ned Lamont's (D) subsequent indication that he plans to sign it, Dauphinais told Blaze News that "if it should pass, parents are going to really have to pay attention to their own school libraries."

RELATED: Texas bans explicit content in schools — and Democrats are not happy

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D). Photographer: Bing Guan/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Some of the books at issue made an appearance during a February press conference where Dauphinais, state Sen. Henri Martin, and other Connecticut Republicans underscored the need for greater parental control. Among the books cited for their sexually graphic content were "Let's Talk About It: The Teen's Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human (A Graphic Novel)" by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan, and Cory Silverberg's "You Know, Sex: Bodies, Gender, Puberty and Other Things."

'Let's try to keep some decorum.'

During the budget debate in the state House, Dauphinais, the ranking member of the Children's Committee, provided a better sense of the kinds of obscenities to which state schools are exposing Connecticut children.

After warning onlookers with children to remove them, Dauphinais read an excerpt from Lauren Myracle's book "l8r, g8r," saying, "Have you ever given Logan a blow job? No blow job for you, missy? What about plain old sex?"

The material appeared to make some of Dauphinais' colleagues across the aisle uneasy, even though they were effectively fighting to protect kids' access to it.

Dauphinais, among the Republican lawmakers who stressed that parents should have a say in whether obscene content remains in school libraries, also read from the book, "Me and Early and the Dying Girl," quoting a character as saying, "'Are you gonna eat her p***y?' 'Yeah, Earl, I'm going to eat her p***y.'"

Democratic Deputy Speaker Juan Candelaria interrupted the conservative Republican, banging his gavel and saying, "Madam, I would ask that if we not try to use that type of language in the chamber. Let's try to keep some decorum."

Candelaria asked Dauphinais to refrain from uttering such words out of respect for children and for "others that might get offended."

Dauphinais, who previously suggested that an adult reading such books to kids outside of school would justifiably be accused of "grooming," responded to Candelaria, "This is in elementary school libraries, approved by the very individuals that are supposed to be the experts."

The CT Mirror reported that Democratic state Rep. Larry Butler expressed outrage — not with the fact that such books are in Connecticut school libraries but that Dauphinais read from them.

'It's a game and a gimmick to get what [Democrats] want in there.'

"I will tell you that in my 18 years here, I have never seen the demonstration of such vulgarity tonight, reaching the lowest level that I've ever seen in this chamber," said Butler. "When we're talking about books in libraries, that's one thing. You could just mention a book."

State House Majority Leader Jason Rojas said, "I think it just threw people off quite a bit to hear that kind of language being used on the floor."

RELATED: Parents fight evil in schools — and seek justice at the Supreme Court

Photo by OLIVER CONTRERAS/AFP via Getty Images

Republican state Sen. Rob Sampson told Blaze News, "If Democrats thought this policy was defensible, they wouldn’t have buried it in a 700-page budget. They're shielding graphic, sexually explicit content in school libraries — and they know parents wouldn't stand for it if they saw it in the light of day."

"The irony?" continued Sampson. "When my colleague read a passage from one of these books aloud, they ruled it out of order. If it's too obscene for the House floor, it's too obscene for a school. This isn't about banning books — it's about protecting kids."

"Democrats claim these books are fine for kids in schools, but too explicit for adults in the House Chamber," said Dauphinais. "They’re choosing pornography over parents — and then call us crazy for speaking out. I am appalled but not surprised."

When asked whether this is the end of the story now that the budget has passed, Sampson told Blaze News, "There's still a chance to strip this garbage out of the budget, but it'll take a spine from the governor and a spotlight from the press."

Dauphinais told Blaze News that there is presently uncertainty over whether Lamont can veto the legislation as it is not a budget item.

"It's a game and a gimmick to get what [Democrats] want in there," said the Republican. "The maneuver was putting it in a budget where it didn't belong."

"Because it doesn't have dollars attached to it, we're told that that's not something that he's able to veto," added Dauphinais.

To undo the legislation, a new bill may be needed.

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SCOTUS to hear radicals' challenge to Texas law that protects kids from the ravages of pornography



The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in the case Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton, which concerns commercial entities' ability to peddle graphic and often brutal pornographic content online without ensuring that impressionable children are not among their users.

The outcome of this case could prove consequential, not just for the porn industry and the well-being of American children nationwide but for social media and other platforms where age restrictions could also play a role in preventing the corruption of youth.

Jon Schweppe, policy director at the American Principles Project, which filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court supporting Texas' law, told Blaze News, "We have 19 states that have passed these bills. 83% of the country supports age verification, so there's no question that this is something that the people and their legislatures want, and now it's up to the court to decide whether it wants to be in the way of that or not — and I don't think they will."

Texas is among the many red states that have passed age verification laws in recent years to protect children from harmful content online.

In the case of the Lone Star State's law, HB 1181, commercial entities that publish or distribute sexual material harmful to minors must verify that individuals attempting to access that material are at least 18 years old or older. Failure to do so could result in civil penalties. Additionally, pornography peddlers must display health warnings noting that "pornography is potentially biologically addictive, is proven to harm human brain development, desensitizes brain reward circuits, increases conditioned responses, and weakens brain function."

The legal blog Howe on the Court noted that after Texas successfully passed HB 1181 in June 2023, a smut-industry trade association challenged its enforcement, claiming that the age verification violated the First Amendment by impacting adults' access to constitutionally protected expression.

Whereas a federal district court obliged the pornographers, temporarily preventing the enforcement of the law and suggesting that it was identical to the Child Online Protection Act — which the Supreme Court indicated was likely unconstitutional in Ashcroft v. ACLU — the U.S Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit lifted the injunction, leaning on the Supreme Court's 1968 decision in Ginsberg v. New York that cleared the way for states to restrict minors' access to harmful sexual material.

The case has now been kicked to the Supreme Court, which rejected a request last year to reinstate the lesser court's injunction against the Texas law.

'There's no way ... that if you can't age-verify for porn, it's going to be constitutional to age-verify for social media.'

Brad Littlejohn, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told Blaze News that the case before the court primarily concerns which standard of review the court of appeals should have applied to determine whether the injunction should stand — rational basis or strict scrutiny. The Free Speech Coalition, which advocates for pornographers and others in the sex industry, figures the Texas law should be subjected to strict scrutiny.

"If the court says, 'Yeah, strict scrutiny applies to any attempts to age-verify online,' then it's a lot harder going forward for states that are trying to protect minors from pornography or, just in general, any attempt to say, 'We think it's important to know whether or not someone online is a minor or not,'" said Littlejohn.

Schweppe indicated that if the pornography coalition wins in this case, there could be significant downstream effects, not just regarding pornography sites but also social media.

"There's no way, for example, that if you can't age-verify for porn, it's going to be constitutional to age-verify for social media," said Schweppe. "This case is really going to be determinative of what types of common-sense regulations we can put on the internet."

Littlejohn noted that the petitioners' "argument comes down to really camping out on the Ashcroft position 21 years ago."

Congress passed the Child Online Protect Act in 1998 with the aim of restricting minors' access to pornography online. The American Civil Liberties Union and various publishers sued to prevent its enforcement, arguing that the child protection law infringed upon their free speech rights. The case, Ashcroft v. the ACLU, ended up before the Supreme Court, which ultimately held in a 5-4 ruling that Congress had failed to demonstrate that the requirements under the law were more effective than other means of protecting kids from pornography online.

"They basically say that nothing has changed in the meantime. The biggest part of the Ashcroft claim was that age verification technology was not really viable to do it in a way that was privacy-preserving, and that may have been true in 2004. It's ridiculous to say that is true in 2025," said Littlejohn. "The other thing about the Ashcroft case is that they said content filtering will work just fine. That was plausible in a world of mostly desktop computers, not plausible in the world where most households have dozens of internet devices."

The petitioners' case "relies on kind of saying, 'Let's put our heads in the sand and pretend nothing's changed since 2004 and let's just stick with that precedent,'" added Littlejohn.

"There's some misconceptions about age verification," said Schweppe. "People tend to think that it must mean only a state ID. And part of our arguments to the court is that the technology in 30 years has improved dramatically to the point now where you know they can actually verify your age without knowing who you are. They can do biometric scans. They can look at consumer data and determine if you're an adult or not."

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton noted in a May opposition brief that were the porn peddlers fighting the law "brick-and-mortar bookstores or sidewalk magazine stands, Ginsberg v. New York would permit Texas to require them to check the age of their customers before selling them pornography. Petitioners instead insist that because they have moved their business online, the First Amendment allows them to provide access to nearly inexhaustible amounts of obscenity to any child with a smartphone."

Paxton stressed that "far from prohibiting a substantial amount of protected speech, [HB 1181] does not prohibit speech at all but rather only requires pornographers to check the ages of their users."

Texas maintains that the law is essential because the proliferation of smartphones and the overabundance of pornography have led to a public health crisis.

Porn is 'associated with the erosion of the quality of men's sex lives ... lower levels of sexual self-competence, impaired sexual functioning, and decreased partner-reported sexual satisfaction.'

Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), and 20 other Republican lawmakers in the U.S. Senate and House hammered this point home in a November court brief, noting that since the high court's 2004 ruling in Ashcroft, smartphones are now everywhere and have exponentially increased in capability, providing children fast access to pornography glamorizing rape, incest, and other forms of physical abuse, effectively harming and desensitizing generations of Americans.

"H.B. 1181 is a constitutional exercise of state power under any relevant standard of review. But subjecting such age verification laws to strict scrutiny could unduly hamstring amici and their states' ability to pass laws," continued the lawmakers. "Internet pornography is a plague that causes harm to millions of American children. This case is about federal and state legislatures' power to protect children from exposure to online pornography. This Court should reaffirm its long-standing rule that the government can prohibit the dissemination of pornography to children by imposing age-access restrictions on distributors."

There is plenty of scientific literature indicating that pornography wreaks havoc on viewers' minds and health, particularly that of young people.

A June 2023 Israeli study published in the scientific journal Body Image indicated a link between pornography consumption and both negative body image and the increased severity of eating disorder symptoms.

A February 2022 study published in the journal Psychological Medicine found that porn is "associated with the erosion of the quality of men's sex lives" — "associated with lower levels of sexual self-competence, impaired sexual functioning, and decreased partner-reported sexual satisfaction."

The Australian government determined that pornography consumption by young people has served to "normalize sexual violence and contribute to unrealistic understandings of sex and sexuality."

A 2014 study revealed that watching porn actually could shrink a part of the brain linked to pleasure.

Littlejohn noted that since the case before the court concerns the narrow question of whether to uphold the preliminary injunction against the law as well as which standard of review should be applied to determine whether the injunction should stand — rational basis or strict scrutiny — there "could be a whole other stage where the law is tried on the merits."

"So it's quite possible the court gives a decision that doesn't really give a clear victory and kind of kicks the can down the road," added Littlejohn.

"We're optimistic," said Schweppe. "We think that the court will basically overturn previous precedent they have. If you look at Reno v. ACLU and Ashcroft v. ACLU, the court elevated what they would consider the free speech concerns of adults over the compelling state interest of protecting kids. Obviously that hasn't worked out very well, so we're asking the court to review a law that was similar to the law they struck down in the 1990s."

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The questions about porn feminists refuse to answer



Technology has, in the words of sex columnist Dan Savage, “put a porn studio in everyone’s pockets.” That’s not to say that other, more traditional forms of pornography have been eradicated and replaced by amateur productions. There are, of course, still porn studios, still women who, either voluntarily or through coercion, act in more produced pornographic films. But the consumption and production of porn have radically changed. While pornography has always existed, we are living in an unprecedented era. Far gone are the days of debating obscenity laws. Amateur porn is now considered by some an integral piece in the seduction process between romantic partners, as would-be lovers send one another "nudes," often before first meeting.

The current conversation around porn is primarily anchored in voluntary consumption and production. To the consumers, we speak often of removing the stigma that surrounds sex and allowing people their sexual outlets. This ranges from everything from the garden variety to more “hard-core” expressions of pornography, with conversations around “kink-shaming” being a recognizable part of public discourse.

Now, if that’s how they react to people throwing softballs, think about what happens when harder questions like, 'What do we do with trafficked or coerced women?' pop up.

On the production end, the mainstream lens has moved away from women who may have been coerced (either through their economic conditions or by another party) into porn to "voluntary sex workers." Even the language we use to describe porn production has collapsed, where cam girls and other kinds of amateur "content creators" are discussed in the same breath as professional pornographers, exotic dancers, and prostitutes. They all exist under the umbrella of "sex work," and the assumption is that all participation is voluntary and enthusiastic. Here, stigma comes under attack again, seen as the sole reason sex workers suffer. I recall a debate I got into with a sex-positive feminist sometime last year, where she vociferously claimed that the “real problem” that prostitutes who work primarily at truck stops face is that people shame them. She claimed that there is no reason why anyone would feel humiliated by knocking on cab doors and selling sex other than society-imposed policing of sexuality.

It’s well-trodden ground that for any of these arguments to be coherent, you must accept that sex is morally neutral. It exists somewhere between “consumer product,” “just labor,” and “just another bodily function,” like using the restroom or eating. In fact, the latter is another analogy that often gets evoked. Even though many of us eat at fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s regularly, that will never take away how special it is to cook a meal at home for yourself or for someone you love. Or, put another way, some people love to cook for themselves; other people don’t mind cooking for strangers.

A third commonly referenced analogy deals more specifically with labor. It goes something like this: Any job you work causes you problems — emotional, physical, and psychic — so why does sex work get extra scrutiny? No matter how sex is described, advocates aggressively deny that there is a possible world where sexual intercourse could have any intrinsic meaning or value. To them, the idea that sex could be sacred in and of itself is considered a preposterous idea. Curiously, though, a contradiction emerges. The very same people who assert that sex is morally neutral will also shout that rape is among the worst crimes you can commit. In a worldview that promotes rehabilitation for criminals, sex crimes are both nebulously defined and seem to constitute being banished from society permanently. But why this special focus if sex is morally neutral?

The answer, according to them, is because it violates the person's consent. But ostensibly, any crime is a violation of consent, so why the special focus on sex? One has to wonder if it's an incoherent argument or if continued probing would reveal that sex is considered a type of property that can be bartered with, sold, or offered for free, but never stolen. But even that would at least suggest it's a valuable type of property. This perspective ultimately collapses onto itself.

Another curious piece missing in the pro-pornography arguments around production — how empowering it is — is the very real ramifications of the labor. “Sex work is work” until you get into the nitty-gritty of what that means. Even morally neutral arguments evaporate in public conversation, often minimized under the "that’s just stigma" banner.

Let’s accept their narrative terms here: There is nothing morally wrong with producing pornography. Not only is there nothing morally wrong with producing pornography, one can voluntarily engage in it and enjoy it. But what of the conversations around the potential emotional and psychological impacts of people analyzing your body with the precision one might with any other purchased consumer product? Just as we carefully examine our new cars and mobile phones, consumers of sex work of any variety, including but not limited to porn, do the same to women’s bodies. A rogue pimple or stretch mark suddenly comes under a critic’s eye. Is the solution here never to read reviews of your work? What if it starts impacting your income? What are the psychological ramifications of knowing that your appearance is “worth” $2.50 a month, whereas other women are “worth” thousands?

Any line of questioning is framed as “anti-sex-work” and quickly silenced. People will argue that questions are a slippery slope that will open the door to people who don’t want sex work to exist or, at a bare minimum, people who don’t want it to exist to this extent. But if your position can be so easily weakened by questions that accept your premise, then how strong is your position in the first place? How empowering can something be if any whiff of negativity removed from the narrative that porn producers are a victimized class is shut down immediately?

Now, if that’s how they react to people throwing softballs, think about what happens when harder questions like, “What do we do with trafficked or coerced women?” pop up.

It’s a system that works only if all flaws are obfuscated.