Obscenity

An obscenity is any statement or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. Satirizing the ruler may be obscene, offending the god(s) may be obscene, making obscene profits is obscene.

The United States, a litigious country (it was born litigious), has led the world in specifying specifically what obscenity is in the United States. "Freedom of the press" is protected in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that the First Amendment does not protect obscenity.

This is how these things get decided in the United States: the Supreme Court decides them. The Supreme Court justices are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate; after that, they have a job for life and never have to worry about elections. This is as close to royalty that one finds in the United States, created before the French revolution of 1789, when monarchy had never been seriously challenged outside of England. Nominating supreme court judges is one of the most important and impactful presidential duties.

Whatever you think of the Supreme Court justices - I will not put here my opinion of Clarence Thomas - it is undeniable that they have taken their positions seriously. These highly-educated men and women - better educated than most members of congress and all presidents except Woodrow Wilson - have not been immune to ideological pressures, but so far as is known - and the Supreme Court is intensely scrutinized - there has been no bribery for a very long time. In the United States, this is as close to incorruptibility as one gets. Some scholars have pointed out that being subject to ideological pressures is not only wise, it is inevitable.

What these distinguished gentlemen have left us with is the equation of providing sexual stimulation with "lack of social value". The one thing you can't do is turn readers on; that is awful and we've prohibited it. Teach someone (in a book) how to kill, the First Amendment protects you. Provide sexual pleasure, or teach the reader how to get or find sexual pleasure, that serves no social purpose and the state has a legitimate interest in prohibiting it.

It is rare to see such a clearcut labelling of sex, of pleasure as bad. (In the seventeenth-century Counterreformation, color was too sensual, so paintings were done in black and white.)

Masturbation was threatening to females. Who's going to buy the cow if they can get the milk for free?

The Rest of the Story (remember Paul Harvey?)

Like it or not, I'm an old fart. But at least I'm a living, masturbating fart.

Even though the First Amendment does not protect obscenity (what we would today call pornography), pornography is everywhere in the United States, and other Western countries. There's a YouPorn for user-created videos, inspired by YouPorn. You can get it on (expensive) pay TV in your hotel room. The online market for used porn, adultdvdmarketplace - dot - com - has over a million listings. There's much more free porn on the Internet (see Internet pornography), searchable by keyword, than one could see in a lifetime. Just one of the 15 or so big free video porn clip hosts, xvideos, reports over 3,000 submissions

Could it all be legal? Yes it could. None of it is obscene. It all has redeeming social value.

The Americans are logical to a fault. You find it hard to see the redeeming social value, other than causing sexual excitement, in 666analsluts #5"? It teaches how to be an anal slut, that plenty of women are anal sluts (it's up to #5, and shows no sign of stopping), that anal sex is O.K. That's sex education. 666 means that it has something Satanic, so it provides religious education.

Hey, it's not "utterly" without social value. So it's not obscene. So it's legal. That's how the U.S. does these things.

The Rest of the Rest of the Story

Judges are influenced by the mores of the people of their town, county, or state. They have to be, because otherwise they would be recalled (fired by special election in the middle of the term), or voted out of office at the next election. Four little-known heroes of the march towards gay marriage in the United States are the four judges of the Iowa Supreme Court who voted to legalize gay marriage in Iowa. All lost their jobs at the next election.

The actual story, from the 1960's to the 2000's, has been lurching from one case to another, as typically happens in the U.S. case law system. Certainly the willingness of some who were willing to stand up and spend money defending their First Amendment tight of freedom of speech. Barney Roth and the scruffier Al Goldstein are the best examples. At the sm

Al Goldstein Organized industry

According to the famous 1957 Roth Supreme Court decision, the obscene work must also be "utterly without redeeming social value" to lose First Amendment protection. "Socially valuable" meant, and still means today, doing something other than sexually stimulating the reader or viewer.