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Federal Obscenity Rule Nixed In Internet Porn Case
CaptainEbo writes "A court has declared the federal anti-obscenity law unconstitutional in a criminal case against an Internet porn distributor: 'We find that the federal obscenity statutes burden an individual's fundamental right to possess, read, observe, and think about what he chooses in the privacy of his own home by completely banning the distribution of obscene materials.' The court's decision rested in part on Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court case striking down anti-sodomy laws. Under Lawrence, said the court, 'upholding the public sense of morality is not even a legitimate state interest.'"
upholding the public sense of morality is not even a legitimate state interest.
it's about fucking time! I'm getting so sick of these self-righteous jackasses that seem to think I have to live my life according to *their* beliefs.
If it were a legitimate state interest, then we would need laws banning sloth and greed, too, and no one here in the U.S. really wants that.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
The best thing that could happen now is for this to be appealed to the Supreme Court, to have them grant certiorari, and to find along the same lines as they did in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas.
:)
It's about time that it's been determined that "public morality" does not extend past public places. Then again, there has been much absurdity in both laws and judicial decisions for as long as there have been laws and judicial decisions.
Hopefully this is the start of a trend that will continue. The major "if" is who GWB will put on the Court after Rehnquist retires/dies. However, with what the Democrats have been doing regarding nominations to any post call into question whether anyone could possibly be confirmed onto the Court. We might just have a vacancy forever, because if the Democrats can do it, so can the Republicans if a Democrat wins in 2008.
it doesn't matter if it's porn or whatever... the judge summed it up perfectly. It is not the right nor the job of government to tell an adult person what they can see/think/read, and anything of the sort *is* an infringement on my liberties.
I also find it pretty funny that the bible-thumping types that are always so vocal about porn had a conference in some hotel a while back, and that hotel reported a 600% increase of their in-room porn rentals over that weekend... pot, meet kettle.
Remember when Republicans were all about not getting involved state issues? (pre-Reagan) What happened is that they have discovered that it's so better to aggregate the power into the hands of the few via legislation and control the populace and impose "morality" that way.
Take the gay marriage issue. Should this REALLY be a federal issue? Of course not and thank heavens that Sen. McCain pointed out that such a federal law would interfere with "state's rights".
Federal anti-obscenity laws aren't any different. What doesn't play in Peoria could be considered as quite tame in NYC.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
It's quite probable that a Pittsburgh judge _would_ be more conservative than a CA judge. The mistake the authorities might have made -- and it's a natural mistake you make here also -- is in thinking that 'conservative' is a label applied to people who have conservative social stances only, rather than people who also have conservative judicial stances.
It wasn't too long ago that 'conservatives' were the people who were loathe to add more laws and regulations that interfere with people's ability to do what they wanted, and were arguing we needed a very strong, clear harm to be present in an activity before it was legislated against. These days, the neocons and social conservatives (and Christian Fascists, frankly) have stolen the 'conservative' label and have started to label anyone who doesn't agree with their social policies as a liberal (with the obvious implications that liberals are the ones taking down this country, corrupting our youth, and providing hostelling services to travelling al Queda terrorists, of course).
It's perfectly within reason that a conservative person would find an anti-obscenity law ludicrous and offensive, and it's good that this one did.
"It is not the right nor the job of government to tell an adult person what they can see/think/read, and anything of the sort *is* an infringement on my liberties.
"
you forgot one.....
ingest. It's none of their business what I put into my body either.
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
And how many nanoseconds elapsed before the right-wing talk radio choir started their Banshee-like wailing over "activist judges"?
You would be right about this, except for one thing. Laws against murder and theft are not to protect morality, but to protect one's rights, specifically the right to life and property. Laws against obscenity are not protecting anybody's rights, only infringing on them.
This comment was thought up very late at night and does not necessarily reflect my views at a more reasonable hour.
You are so absolutely wrong, the laws against murder and theft are not laws for moral reasons. Government has one basic purpose and one purpose only, to maintain a monopoly on the use of force and coercion, and prevent the use of force and coercion by one citizen against another (policing) and by other countries/states against its own country/state (military).
This is the one area where both the Democrats and Republicans piss me off the most.
The democrats are being hypocrites as they are the ones always yelling about the republicans legislating morality, when what is welfare but moral legislation to force it citizenry to care for those less well off.
And the repubulicans are just as bad yammering about keeping government from over regulating and restricting our freedoms, and then they turn around and support laws which restrict our freedoms with regard to activities were there is no force/coercion/victim.
You can have the best reasoning skills in the world, and if your initial premises are flawed, you conclusion will be wrong every time.
I just wish people would really take the time to think about the consequences and effects of all this legislation, instead of the indulging the knee jerk, liberal pandering to "society's needy", and the conservative drive to a theocratic tyranny.
Goverment is supposed protect us from others, not take care of us, and not protect us from ourselves.
Anything else is an abuse of liberty!
my old sig is obsolete, and I haven't come up with a stupid enough new one yet
My decision was made in 2000. When Bush won the 2000 election, I knew I'd be voting for him again in 2004.
That statement alone indicates you are not competent or qualified to make intelligent political commentary. For all you knew Bush would break every campaign promise he ever made about honesty, openness and integrity in his administration, create a police state with secret imprisonments, cancel habeus corpus, approve the use of torture, invade a country under false pretenses, driven the US into a half a trillion dollar debt, begun the dismantling of social security, politicize the civil service, appoint incompetents throughout his cabinet, and preside over the worst four years of the stock market since the Great Depression, and then STILL wouldn't be able to think of a single thing he did wrong in the previous four years. But, oh boy, you knew you'd vote for him in 2004 when he won in 2000.
Its knee jerk reality-challenged people like you that just make me shake my head in wonder.
normalization of sexual attitudes and activities previously considered vulgar and obscene, and thus repressed or even banned outright by law.
That paragraph just screamed "interracial marriage" at me, and theme carries pretty well through your entire post. Did you know that as recently as 1967 (quite possibly during your lifetime) some one-third of all states had laws against interracial marriage? In several cases going so far as making it a criminal offense with up to 10 years in prison?
And of course you can easily complain about all sorts of ways society has gone to hell since the laws against interracial marriage were struck down.
And in case you missed the obvious, there is absolutely no constitutional difference between prohibiting interracial marriage and prohibiting gay marriage. Legally they are both attempts to discriminate which applicants are permitted to marry. Of course there are perfectly legal grounds for discriminating some acceptable applicants from other unacceptable applicants, such as that they have to be 2 humans capable of consent. However any attempt for the law to discriminate between applicants on the basis of race, gender, or religion is unconstitutional. Either the individual clause restricting applicants on that basis is null and void and all otherwise qualified applicants must be accepted, or if such single-clause-stickdown is not possible then the entire law granting any marriages at all would be invaild. No one would be able to legally marry in that state.
Oh, and I really love how you try to blame AIDS on "the newly open culture of male gay sex". First of all there would be no difference whether the culture was "open" or hidden in the closet. Secondly even if there were no gays at all it wouldn't have made much difference. Sure AIDS got a faster start in the gay community, but that also resulted in earlier detection and response. The vast majority of the spread of AIDS is from non-gay populations. We'd have almost the exact same "epidemic".
If you really want a health-based crusade you really should be declaring that hand-shaking is immoral. That results in more spread of more diseases than anything else.
But civilizations also have an interest in repressing at least the most extremes of the forbidden, for society's own good. And THAT is why we still have obscenity laws.
No, there is no legitimate use of government force for the sole purpose that some people dislike something. The primary legitimate purpose for law and the use of government force is in preventing one person from violating another person's rights, and responding to such violations when they occur. Sure there are other valid purposes for law, running a military and estabishing an economy and infrastructure, yada yada yada. But what we are talking about here is creating criminal law without any actual underlying crime against anyone's rights. You do not have a rigght not to be offended. If you don't want to be promiscuous, fine, don't be promiscuous. You don't want to buy porn, fine, don't buy porn. You don't want gay marriage "imposed on you", fine, don't enter a gay marriage.
There is certainly a legitimate government purpose in a law against violating someone's right not to be shot in the head. That is not a morality-law. That is a violatrion of someone's rights and it is a crime. As the court ruled, public morality is not a legitimate state interest to criminalize things that merely offend public's sense of morality.
You can't force people into heaven by holding a gun to their head. People are perfectly free to choose to go to hell. If someone is being "immoral", but he is not voilating any of your rights, then you have no buiness pulling out a gun and forcibly imprisoning him for it.
obscenity laws. Now, if you disagree with them, then work to change that. BUT...simply bitching about the laws won't accomplish anything.
In case you hadn't noticed this entire story is about changing the law by ha
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.