mk among others love to throw out that Potter Stewart saw "I know it when I see it" because it's quippy and chinstroking without recognizing how fucking stupid it is. I'm not sure whether this got shared for the truth or the irony. The fact of the matter is, Jacobellis v. Ohio stood for two whole fucking years before the courts went "thanks a lot, Potter" and came up with a real fucking definition. Sixty years later and the hipsters are still going "I know it when I see it" as if it's anything other than an ex post facto justification of their vibes.

The problem is that society needs to draw a line so that everyone can argue about where that line is. That's basically governance in a nutshell - where do we interfere with personal liberties and where do we tut tut and publicly shame instead? Liberal jurisprudence tends to follow the victim - if there is no victim there is no crime. Conservative jurisprudence tends to follow the culture - if it's culturally acceptable there is no crime. Polite society doesn't need rules for every fucking thing because most of us will go along to get along until things get truly dicey. Unfortunately our conservatives have largely been replaced by reactionaries going "let's do horrible things because there aren't any explicit rules against it" and "let's make explicit rules against anything that offends our culture."

Getting a girl drunk to make it easier to have sex with her is legal because there's a long cultural tradition of disinhibition in courtship and because ultimately, the girl is putting the drinks to her lips. Roofing a girl to make it easier to have sex with her is illegal because there's no consent... but! "there's no consent" was a Very Special Episode of every fucking evening soap in the '90s. On one side, sure. "Moral panic." On the other side, my girlfriend got roofed in '97. Friend of a friend got roofed in '03. A third friend frickin' synthesized rohypnol in '98, ostensibly to trip... but I mean... it's not like we cruised bars together. I would argue we needed the Very Special Episodes because there was a real argument that putting valium in a cosmo was just Advanced Seduction.

The conservatives will always launch into anti-sex measures whenever they see culture shifting away from them. They always have. What's important is they always lose in the long run - every law thrown up to protect the culture gets torn down eventually because culture shifts.