I'm a Texan, a Christian, and a conservative; maybe I can help? Your impressions of Texas are all true, in my experience (though keep in mind that it's a big place and Austin is barely distinguishable from a California city). You're right that the dominant values come into conflict sometimes, with libertarians wanting to protect porn and social conservatives wanting to ban it. The reasons for wanting to ban porn go something like this:
1. Unmarried men will consume it in lieu of putting their sexual frustration to good use by looking for a wife -- or if necessary, working on self-improvement until they're worthy of the kind of wife they want.
2. Married men will consume it while depriving their wives of sexual contact. If necessary, those men should be confronting whatever marital problems are preventing sex from happening often enough to satisfy them.
3. A huge amount of porn production is downstream of major personal and societal tragedies; the actors being threatened in some way is eerily common (just ask Andrew Tate), and even the "consenting" ones often have histories of sexual abuse and unresolved trauma that are tainting their "consent." A hypothetical society where every daughter grows up in a two-parent household, is known and loved by her father, and is never raped, is going to have a major shortage of porn stars.
Jordan Peterson has talked a lot about the downsides of porn, you can find plenty of snippets on YouTube. I'd recommend this if you want to know more about why conservatives oppose it.
We have to keep in mind that half the population has below-average conscientiousness, and will find it very difficult to resist temptations (such as porn) that are daily put in front of them. Christian societies have generally believed that it's good to work together and structure things to minimize the number of such stumbling blocks (to the extent that it's feasible). Banning porn is considered a step towards that goal.
BUT, you're also right that personal liberty is important and might cut against this. My guess is, this bill was framed in terms of age verification to try and work around this; the authors of it are clearly anti-porn, but if anyone asks, they could say "we're not banning porn, just preventing minors from accessing it."
I've noticed some other commenters claiming things like "conservatives are lying about believing X, it's really an excuse to do Y" so let me address that: all of the viewpoints I've described here are very sincerely held, as I know well from many different conversations with people in the community.
> consume it in lieu of putting their sexual frustration to good use by looking for a wife
> consume it while depriving their wives of sexual contact
These are astounding ideas which, empirically, evoke laughter and/or revulsion in honest women.
> A huge amount of porn production is downstream of major personal and societal tragedies;
This clause sounds reasonable. But Texas has shown zero appetite for addressing the personal and social tragedies that lead some people to the porn industry. So, I am very skeptical that caring for the common (wo)man is part of the true motivation.
> all of the viewpoints I've described here are very sincerely held
It would be naive to believe that people cannot sincerely hold beliefs which are simply perpetuating of a self-serving narrative. In fact I'd say it's the norm.
> even the "consenting" ones often have histories of sexual abuse and unresolved trauma that are tainting their "consent." A hypothetical society where every daughter grows up in a two-parent household, is known and loved by her father, and is never raped, is going to have a major shortage of porn stars.
Your heart's in the right place but your logic here is flawed. By framing it this way you muddy the entire concept of consent by declaring an entire class mentally unsound on account of unsubstantiated past events. Exceptions for intoxication are arbitrary enough. Now past "trauma" invalidates consent?
Don't get complacent. It's easier than you think to recruit the next generation of porn stars from stable families; it's been happening in front of us all along. Just expose kids to sexual topics early and often, nudge them in the direction of alternative religions with euphemistic masturbation rituals, promote the idea that promiscuity and "sex work" is normal and empowering, get them used to posing for cameras for validation, offer them more attention than their parents, get them to reblog excerpts of erotic literature with strangers, persuade them to run away, and coerce them into prostitution/child porn. It's the "fuck you mom and dad please help me" pipeline. The sexual abuse starts under your own roof and the rape only begins at the end. It's the parents who assume their family is immune that end up blindsided. Everything throughout is engineered coercion.
Once grooming became a taboo topic, we stopped talking about it long enough to forget what it even looked like. Anyone interested can trawl /r/runaway or Roblox/Discord looking for fresh faces to add to the NCMEC posters. The FBI has been warning about this for years...but fuck those morons, we're "protecting kids" by banning Backpage, TikTok and PornHub. Porn stars don't all start as junkies from broken homes but they often end that way.
If you and your community care as much as you claim, please advocate for effective mandatory parental controls, especially within multiplayer game environments that allow communication. The action against PornHub is an empty stunt that will likely not stand and achieves nothing.
1. Unmarried men will consume it in lieu of putting their sexual frustration to good use by looking for a wife -- or if necessary, working on self-improvement until they're worthy of the kind of wife they want.
2. Married men will consume it while depriving their wives of sexual contact. If necessary, those men should be confronting whatever marital problems are preventing sex from happening often enough to satisfy them.
3. A huge amount of porn production is downstream of major personal and societal tragedies; the actors being threatened in some way is eerily common (just ask Andrew Tate), and even the "consenting" ones often have histories of sexual abuse and unresolved trauma that are tainting their "consent." A hypothetical society where every daughter grows up in a two-parent household, is known and loved by her father, and is never raped, is going to have a major shortage of porn stars.
Jordan Peterson has talked a lot about the downsides of porn, you can find plenty of snippets on YouTube. I'd recommend this if you want to know more about why conservatives oppose it.
We have to keep in mind that half the population has below-average conscientiousness, and will find it very difficult to resist temptations (such as porn) that are daily put in front of them. Christian societies have generally believed that it's good to work together and structure things to minimize the number of such stumbling blocks (to the extent that it's feasible). Banning porn is considered a step towards that goal.
BUT, you're also right that personal liberty is important and might cut against this. My guess is, this bill was framed in terms of age verification to try and work around this; the authors of it are clearly anti-porn, but if anyone asks, they could say "we're not banning porn, just preventing minors from accessing it."
I've noticed some other commenters claiming things like "conservatives are lying about believing X, it's really an excuse to do Y" so let me address that: all of the viewpoints I've described here are very sincerely held, as I know well from many different conversations with people in the community.