The Court of Mist and Fury / Gender Queer controversy is a good opportunity to note an important legal principle: Under modern American law, a work can only be "obscene" and therefore constitutionally unprotected—or "obscene as to minors," and therefore constitutionally unprotected when distributed to minors—if it's basically pornographic taken as a whole.
"A quotation from Voltaire in the flyleaf of a book will not constitutionally redeem an otherwise obscene publication." The rule once seemed to be that, "to be smut, it must be ut- / terly without redeeming social importance," but that is no longer so.
But, conversely, a few sexual scenes in a work likewise don't make a publication obscene. The question is whether its dominant theme appeals to the "prurient interest," which is to say a "shameful or morbid" interest in sex. (The government must also show that the work is patently offensive under contemporary community standards, and that, taken as a whole, it lacks serious value.) Even Justice Scalia, who was open to pretty substantial restrictions on pornographic material, acknowledged this:
