| Quentin |
06-17-2010 10:19 AM |
Hmm... not the most thoroughly researched piece I've read, that's for sure. For starters, there's the laughable, dumbed-down definition of obscenity that they offer:
Quote:
Obscenity is defined as graphic material that focuses on sex or sexual violence, and it includes lewd exhibition of the genitals, close-ups of graphic sex acts and deviant activities such as group sex, bestiality and incest.
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No, it isn't. The legal definition of obscenity is nowhere near this clear. The actual legal definition of obscenity is a question of the Miller Test, which holds that a work is considered obscene if:
Quote:
- The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
- The work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law,
- The work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
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The work in question has to meet all three of those prongs and naturally it doesn't even really end there, because in order to derive any meaning from the standard, you also have to know the statutory and case-law-derived definitions of the key individual terms used in the Miller test as well, like "contemporary community standards," "prurient interest," "patently offensive," etc.
Anti-porn groups tend to argue that essentially any and all hardcore porn meets the above definition, and that shouldn't come as much of a surprise, despite the standard's obvious subjectivity. There's a great deal of crossover between anti-porn groups and both the "religious right" and the "feminist left" -- populations that are typically quite comfortable with telling everyone else how they should think and live, and who frequently pretend that there's nothing ambiguous about the written word, no matter how clearly ambiguous that written word may be.
While it isn't that surprising that the Washington Times ran this story without questioning whether any of the scientific assertions were accurate/well accepted in the relevant fields of study, or that they didn't obtain comment from an opposing viewpoint, it is still disappointing to me that they oversimplified the legal standard to the extent that they did. The Times, after all, benefits from the same First Amendment protections that the adult industry does, so one would hope that they'd have a better understanding of such things.
What am I thinking? This is American journalism in 2010... I should be impressed that they spelled obscenity properly. |
