Obscenity Law, a Remnant From When America Was a Christian Culture

The Christian is not the primary force working on the American culture today. That does not mean that all is lost. There is an assurance in scripture that the Kingdom of God prevails over evil. It may be some time before the American mindset is such that pornography will be banned, but there is a distinction in US law between pornography and obscenity, and there is still an almost universal disgust over child pornography. This provides an opportunity to rid the culture of some highly damaging evil.

It was the 1973 Miller v. California that provides the legal definition for prosecutable obscenity. Prosecutors should prosecute pornographic material if it meets all of the following conditions:

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      1. The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest [in sex]; and

      2. The work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state [or federal] law; and

      3. The work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

This definition is certainly subjective. From community to community, and judge to judge, any particular piece could be seen as obscene or not, however there is precedent to prosecute pornographic material under this definition.

This, of course, illustrates the problem with allowing man to determine good from evil rather than depending on God's objective standard, as revealed in the Bible. Justice Potter Stewart wrestled with this problem in Jacobellis v. Ohio when he said, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ['hard-core pornography']; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it...” Until Christ reigns in America, and this should be the goal of the Christian for this culture, this subjectivity is what you have to work with.

Easier said than done, definitely. When a sexually oriented business moved into a small town one of the city councilmen, understanding that he could not legislate the business out of town, approached the city law director about prosecuting the business on obscenity charges. The law director agreed that this was a possibility, but exclaimed that that would involve watching material purchased from the store. He then said to the councilman, “I don't want to do that. Do you?” No action has been taken against the aforesaid establishment.

More creative measures can be taken to address not only obscenity and child pornography, but all pornographic material, but that is for another article. For now all you need to know is that prosecution is possible if circumstances are present in which you know of obscene material or child pornography being distributed. The law is on your side in these cases.