CMJR 494 - Week 7

Religious-Moral Heresy: Obscenity, Indecency, and Pornography
Where should legal lines be drawn for "worthless" speech?
When I hear the word "heresy", my mind wanders into the dark ages where religious zealots were burned at the stake for taking a stand against the Christian Church. This definition is probably the result of many movies and stories developed over a period of my lifetime that creates an impression of what this term means.
Upon researching the word, it comes from a latin translation of a Greek word that means "choosing, choice, course of action". The encyclopedia's definition is, "the rejection of one or more established beliefs of a religious body, or adherence to 'other beliefs'." Heretics were a group of people wherein their beliefs were challenged by Church authority.
The First Amendment guarantees our freedom of speech and press. Our right to reveal and receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth is a free society's fundamental right. My research found, "It is primarily with regard to the entertaining function of expression that the law of obscenity is concerned, inasmuch as the Court has rejected any concept of "ideological" obscenity. However, this function is not the reason why obscenity is outside the protection of the First Amdnement, although the Court has never really been clear about what that reason is".
It is written, "The government has a compelling interest in the protection of children from seeing or hearing indecent material, but total bans applicable to adults and children alike are constitutionally suspect".
Pornography has and will remain a part of life all over the world. Human nature determines that pornography is an industry that has and will remain a source of adult entertainment and for profit organizations. The line is drawn with regard to child pornography. It is outside the coverage of the First Amendment. Child pornography is "the pictorial representation of children in films or still photographs in a variety of sexual activities of exposures of the genitals". Again, the governments interest is to protect the well being, both physical and psychological of children.
Our text reads (page 131), "Hicklin rule: the test of obscenity is this, whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall".
So, where should lines be drawn for worthless speech? If we abide by the First Amdendment, the line should be drawn if the well being, both physical and psychological, of children is in effect. The definitions of obscene, indecent and pornographic depend on the individual's private and personal perceptions. We are a world of luck, both good and bad, personal choice and decisions. We are who we are, based on the years behind us: Who we have become and what we choose to value.
The First Amendment allows for freedom of speech and press. Good or bad. Is it fair to choose for one another what our interpretation of good or bad is? Is it fair for the government to dictate what we can or should not read or watch? Does our First Amendment protect our children?
Does our First Amendment sometimes fail us or the individuals who wrote it in good faith?
These are questions we must ask ourselves. Our answers are the core to who we are.