Who said anything about an “actress”? It could be somebody’s girlfriend or wife, or just some random woman doing a selfie.
Except that if you shoot porn with consenting adults but intentionally imply that the characters are underage, that is to my understanding illegal.
It’s not a “logical” step, it’s a redundant one, if it’s already a violation of federal law.
That’s like trying to pass a law making it illegal to murder people named Steve.
Even if he really needed killing?
There have been Steves I’ve been tempted to murder.
So, say, the shower scene in Porky’s is now illegal?
I’m not familiar with the movie, but Wiki summary implies it’s a scene with boys looking at girls showering through a peephole?
If the girls are under 18 (the actresses or the characters) I expect they would not show them naked, at least if the movie was being made today. But I’m just guessing based on a half assed understanding of the laws involved.
AIUI No, because (for now) it’s understood it’s not porn. And (for now) it’s not “illegal” in the US (at the federal level) for an adult actor to portray a nominal minor in any sexual situation whatsoever (we had a heated discussion about this years ago on the board). Thing is those scenes would not be made the same today because the standards have changed.
And that is one serious consideration in these discussions. Does the law in question run over the Miller Test to make EVERYTHING with any such representation to be “illegal porn” by decree of whoever takes offense, no consideration of context? The SCOTUS of a generation ago said you cannot just do that and it’s why the applicable federal laws have been specific about what kind of content meets the threshold.
Meanwhile, after the Traci Lords scandal ithe mainstream “respectable” porn industry in the USA steered far and wide away even from any insinuation of “minor” characters for decades, better safe than sorry because of the fragmented state-by-state, court-district-by-court-district “community standards” for obscenity.
They are already coming after adult romance novels.
I think I know why:
A) while the women in these books eventually succumbs to the hero, it is not immediate.
B) the men start out as manly-men, all strong and silent, but then eventually show some softness, leading to (swoon) The Kiss
So they start with two fairly strong characters. The man becomes “weak”. This is precisely what those idiots are afraid of. A man cannot be weak!! A woman cannot be strong!!
As absurd as romance novels are, I think they benefit young girls/teenagers in letting them indulge in a bit of fantasy in the same way I used to read The Hardy Boys and imagine myself as a teenage detective.
(I do know adult women read adult romance, I have a friend who writes them)
Interesting quote from the article
For years, we’ve been hearing the story of “pornography” in libraries. It’s mainly been applied as “pornography for children,” code for books by or about LGBTQ+ people; other words slung about include “inappropriate,” “sexually explicit,” “sexually deviant,” or “obscene.”
I posted a link earlier to Dr Slump, an earlier creation if the guy who wrote the more famous (in the US and possibly in Japan too) Dragon Ball. Dr. Slump ran for 236 weekly chapters in the early 80s and led to two anime series, one that ran for 243 episodes and one that ran for 74. Dr. Slump is a zany comedy about a scientist who built a robot (girl) child (surely a play on Astro Boy) and lives in a town of wacky characters. The core audience for it was probably young teens or even preteens.
In chapter three (free to read in the above link) the robot girl comes home from school upset that while changing clothes for PE the girls noticed that she was smooth “down there”. The scientist shamefully admits that he couldn’t make her realistic because he had never seen a real naked woman and didn’t know what it looked like. So he invents a pair of x-ray glasses and goes out into the town to try to peek at neighboring women.
I don’t think Texas would like that.
I write romance.
I think they are threatening because they tend to be positive about sex, and because they prioritize women’s sexual and emotional fulfillment. And yes, they are transgressive in both centering women and in depicting men as capable of expressing their emotions.
I wouldn’t generalize too much more than that because there are a wide variety of romance novels and readers look for a lot of different qualities in their stories. I prefer to read and write about deeply flawed people.
And of course romance novels aren’t any more absurd than any other kind of genre fiction.
I was about to say, “or the entire YA novel genre”, because being aimed at Young Adults, i.e. teens, the main characters are under 18, and like normal teens are engaging in sexual/romantic relationships with each other. Can’t wait for Divergent/Maze Runner/Hunger Games/Harry Potter/Vampire Diaries/etc. series to be banned. Well, maybe they’ll cut out an exception for Harry Potter since JK Rowling is so anti-trans.
But it appears I’m already too late, they’re coming for adult romance novels.
If only there were a legal carve-out for teenage literary characters. You could call it a “Romeo and Juliet” law…
And fantasy novels with adult content. In the linked article I spotted one book I have on my bookshelf that’s about dragonriders, and yes, it has some fairly hot sex scenes. I can think offhand of another author in the fantasy genre, Sarah Maas,with several series of books. Some of those series have page after page of hot and heavy action.
Then of course there are all those sci fi and fantasy novels that are just swarming with strong women doing stuff, noncishet characters, wide ranges of pigmentation, etc. Especially in the last couple of decades those genres have expanded their casts of characters massively beyond straight white men. Will those two genres be the next targets?
Oh, I’m just waiting for everyone who ever watched Fast Times at Ridgemont High to turn themselves in to the authorities for watching underage sex. I mean the characters were all in high school. Or even funnier, anyone who watched Beverly Hills:90210 to report themselves to the reeducation camps. Again, the characters were all high school students, even if some of those portraying 15-year-olds were pushing 30. And hell, Aaron Spelling was pimping out his own actual daughter, who was portraying one of those teenagers, with fanservice.
That’s the author I was trying to think of. I have a friend who reads all of Maas’s books, and gleefully refers to them as “smut.” She’s even memorized which pages contain especially sexy scenes, for easy reference. I imagine such things would be an obvious target for anti “porn” laws as soon as lawmakers became aware of them.
Hmm. Now I’m curious to check out her work, lol. I’m not really a fantasy fiction fan, although.. well, I ended up writing a fantasy novel (no magic), so I keep waiting to find fantasy I really like. I did enjoy that Paladin romance series by the author whose name escapes me. As well as the Defender of Walls series - which was fade to black.
I write really sexy books, but try to limit explicit sex to 1-2 scenes, because that’s all you really need. I tend to skip sex scenes in romance novels, especially when the encounters do nothing to serve the story. It’s partly because they just aren’t that well done.
But I stand by the people’s right to smut.
And I think my memories of reading these kinds of books when I was a teen was mostly positive, and I get really tetchy about people trying to police teens’ sexuality. I also wonder if these kinds of fantasies actually delay them having sex at a young age. I promise, no high school boy can compare to a teenager girl’s book boyfriend.
The specific series she was talking about was A Court of Thorns and Roses, which currently has five books (one of which is a novella). That’s all I can tell you. While I enjoy SF and horror, fantasy isn’t really my cup of tea (I found Lord of the Rings an incredible slog).
What I can tell you is that when my friend and I were in a bookstore together a couple of months ago, she ran into a few other fans of that series, and they began discussing various “hot” scenes with great enthusiasm, despite being total strangers.
Sexy fantasy brings people together, I guess. 
Yeah, it certainly can for some people.
I’m opposed to banning porn but I do want to respond to the common myth that romance is porn. A book may have sex scenes, even sex scenes intended to titillate, but that doesn’t make it porn necessarily. While some romance novels are basically pornographic, a lot are more focused on actual stories. Which is one reason the previously accepted definition of obscenity was careful to contextualize the thing as a whole. Sex is a fundamental part of life for most people. It would be weird to write about everything but sex, especially in the context of a romantic relationship.
I never watched Dragonball Z but wasn’t it like nerdy RPG battles? I don’t think you can argue its main intent, when taken as a whole, is obscene.