Supreme Court Declines to Hear Obscenity Case

Justice is reporting that Monday the Supreme Court declined to hear the obscenity case of Nitke v. Gonzales. From the article: "Even in our federal system of government, the law concerning obscenity is a legal oddity. A photograph that in New York would be considered protected speech under the First Amendment could in Alabama be considered obscene, making the photographer and distributors subject to felony charges. That's a consequence of the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 case, Miller v. California, in which the court ruled that obscenity was essentially a subjective judgment, and called for prosecutors, judges and juries to apply 'community standards' in determining what speech was obscene and what was protected. In the age of the Internet, a new issue has been raised - if something considered free speech in New York is accessible in Alabama, where it's considered obscene, what standard should be used? By rejecting the case, the Supreme Court has left that question open."

Comments

What are the options?

[jbolden]

What are the options

1) Come up with real objective standards, which are unquestionably censorship, and creates a huge backlash on the left
2) Legalize everything which creates a huge backlash on the right
3) Have a hedged nuanced position which essentially ducks the issue until the culture is more ready for options 1 or 2
4) Deliberately change the culture in some way so that 1 or 2 become easy

While everyone here would from an emotional standpoint prefer option 2, I'm not sure the Supreme Court's 3+4 position isn't the best way to achieve 2 over the long term.

Before I comment on this article...

[notnAP]

... can I please have everyone who may read it let me know from where they are viewing my reply, so that I may be able to word it correctly and avoid all local legal ramifications?

Re:The Supreme Court takes a step forward.

[Surt]

1. Murder
2. Obscenity
3. Wealth Distribution (taxes)
4. Theft
5. Rape

None of these are to be controlled by the Federal government. None of them should.


Let me debate these:

1. Murder. Does it really seem reasonable to allow a state to define murder? Should a state be allowed to say that killing poor people for sport is ok?

2. Obscenity. Does it really seem ok for a state to be allowed to allow child pornography?

3. Wealth Distribution (taxes). This one I guess I can't think of a good argument against, because there's no fundamentally inescapable coercion involved, as is the case with all the others.

4. Theft. Same argument as murder. Weaker if you're only going to consider non violent thefts.

5. Rape. Same argument as murder.

What if we added to the list:

6. Slavery. Should a state be allowed to make it's own decision about slavery?

My claim is that all of the above except for the taxation issue are really the sort of issue that, morally, should be decided by the most global authority available, which in the case of US states is the federal government.