notes on obscenity
ben goertzel
obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment, Miller v. California,
413 U.S. 15, 93 S. Ct. 2607 (1973), sale or distribution of obscene
material, $3,000 fine for a first offense, and up to two years in jail
and a $10,000 fine for a second or subsequent should no longer be viewed
as a victimless crime. It was the voice of a young man in his late
twenties whom I had counseled, his penis was marred by small warts and
he had a terrible time with exhibitionism, approached people on a picnic
in a park by dropping on the path in front of them from a tree sans
pants. There is mounting evidence that sexually oriented businesses
are, as described earlier in this report, often associated with
furthermore, as discussed previously, when there is no prosecution of
obscenity, large cash profits prove that material is obscene, a
prosecutor must prove: (i) that the average person, applying
contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a
whole, appeals to the prurient interest in sex (the analytical
procedures); (ii) that the work depicts sexual conduct …in a patently
offensive manner; and (iii) that the work, taken as a whole, was also
promiscuous and so his wife was at her wits end and had all of it she
could take. Qua qua qua qua. Now, a couple years after his divorce,
he was calling me from way across the country with yet another sad
tale to tell. He had read in a magazine that it was fun and enhancing
to your relationship to "share" your mate with another man. It had
backfired on him when his girlfriend told him to go away because
she wanted to be with the other guy exclusively. He told me "It
wasn't at all like what they described in the magazine, it was
horrible!" To be sure, to be fucking sure. Prosecutors are generally
not aware that the cult of the prostitute is one of the me (sacred
treasures) given to the Sumerian goddess Inanna by her father Enki,
the god of wisdom. When Inanna takes the me back to the city of
Uruk in the boat of heaven, the people turn out in droves to cheer in
gratitude. A hymn to Inanna which describes the people of Sumer
parading before her says, "The male prostitutes comb their hair
before you. They decorate the napes of their necks with colored
scarves. They drape the cloak of the gods about their shoulders."
They include inadequate training in this specialized area of law,
attempts by defense attorneys to remove jurors who find
pornography offensive, the offering into evidence of polls and
surveys through expert testimony to prove tolerant, in the case such
as that of another young man I had counseled who first told me that
he had witnessed an occultic ritual murder. Alan E. Sears, former
executive director of the U.S. Attorney General's Commission on
Pornography has stated: "In a better world, virgins and novices
would probably resort to prostitutes who specialized in rituals of
initiation and education. A talented sex worker could introduce
brand new players to all of their sexual options, show them
appropriate ways to protect themselves from conception or disease,
and teach them the skills they need to please more experienced
partners. This is a sensible antidote to the traumatic rite of passage
that losing your cherry often is today."