In Middle Eastern countries every home has a VPN subscription, it is an open secret, and there is no effort to crack down on it or block it (i.e. not like China). It lets the government say "We banned the naughty stuff," while allowing their citizenry to rightly access everything at the same time.
The only people put out by the bans in the Middle East are tourists fresh off the plane who didn't do their research.
I also don't think the law in Texas is written against the consumer, e.g. it doesn't say it's illegal to view porn if you haven't shown an ID. Rather, it's levied against the distributor to say it's illegal to show porn to someone you haven't age verified.
So it's not like the act of using the VPN to circumvent this would be criminal.
The ME is obviously a bit of a different situation as they run ISP-based firewall rules to outright ban unwanted sites.
However, the VPN I had setup at my house worked fine and had no issues with being blocked on the basic VPN setup.
And it would be a big overreach of state powers IMHO.
I think technically a state could legislate against it. States have some laws in the US already which would probably raise eyebrows. Illinois makes it up to 5 years in prison to violate the ToS of a web site, for instance. People say to me, "But it's not enforced!"... I'd rather you argue that to the judge at your bail hearing.
Instead, they will find some child who used a VPN to access porn, then sue PornHub for failing to validate the child's age.
Is that legal? I have no idea. You'll have to ask six Federalist Society judges on the Supreme Court.
It ain't no China, though. It's a really flimsy attempt to block things. Skype worked perfectly, but not Facetime, even though not having an iPhone for natives was like not owning a Toyota Landcruiser.