Why the Westboro case should be porn’s victory as well

By J. DeVoy

Mark Kernes has an insightful piece at AVN about what the Westboro case (Snyder v. Phelps – read Randazza’s commentary here) means to porn – or should have meant, if the Roberts court wasn’t consciously out to limit the Court’s holding to the facts in Snyder.  Going beyond the political dimension of public concern, why aren’t matters of obvious social interest – measured by ratings, advertising dollars, headlines and column inches – accorded the same level of protection?  By any of those metrics, sex is certainly a matter of factual public interest, yet apparently not accorded the same legal significance.

It’s an interesting read, and Marks’ writing is better than a number of Opinions I’ve read, even from federal judges.  (I won’t name names.)  When I first started writing for this blog, Randazza recommended that I go back and read Kernes’ writings in AVN to get a sense of the industry’s legal history.  I still find Kernes’ pieces to be insightful and well-researched, even if he would politically disagree with me on, well, substantially everything.