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Concept
Obscenity
Summary
An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality and social politics of the time. It is derived from the Latin obscēnus, obscaenus, "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Such loaded language can be used to indicate strong moral repugnance and outrage, vile, vigilance in conservation, or revenge. In expressions such as "obscene profits" and "the obscenity of war," ; misdirection. As a legal term, it usually refers to graphic depictions of people engaged in sexual and excretory activity, and related utterances of profanity, or the exploited child, human being or situation on display. It may also relate to a fear quotient in the public area affecting trend.
United States obscenity law
In the United States, issues of obscenity raise issues of limitations on the freedom of speech and of the press, which are otherwise protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Federal obscenity law in the U.S. is unusual in that there is no uniform national standard. Former Justice Potter Stewart of the Supreme Court of the United States, in attempting to classify what material constituted exactly "what is obscene", famously wrote, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced ... [b]ut I know it when I see it...." In the U.S., the 1973 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in Miller v. California established a three-tiered test to determine what was obscene—and thus not protected, versus what was merely erotic and thus protected by the First Amendment. Delivering the opinion of the court, Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote:
The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
Official source
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