Posted by:
elderolddog
(
)
Date: February 13, 2020 05:50PM
The "I know it when I see it" Supreme Court case:
"The phrase 'I know it when I see it' is a colloquial expression by which a speaker attempts to categorize an observable fact or event, although the category is subjective or lacks clearly defined parameters. The phrase was used in 1964 by United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to describe his threshold test for obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio.[1][2] In explaining why the material at issue in the case was not obscene under the Roth test, and therefore was protected speech that could not be censored, Stewart wrote:
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."
--Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964)
"This was modified in Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U.S. 413 (1966), in which obscenity was defined as anything patently offensive, appealing to prurient interest, and of no redeeming social value.
"Still, however, this left the ultimate decision of what constituted obscenity up to the whim of the courts, and did not provide an easily applicable standard for review by the lower courts.
"This changed in 1973 with Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973). The Miller case established what came to be known as the Miller test, which clearly articulated that three criteria must be met for a work to be legitimately subject to state regulations. The Court recognized the inherent risk in legislating what constitutes obscenity, and necessarily limited the scope of the criteria. The criteria were:
1) The average person, applying local community standards, looking at the work in its entirety, must find that it appeals to the prurient interest.
2) The work must describe or depict, in an obviously offensive way, sexual conduct, or excretory functions.
3) The work as a whole must lack "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific values.
"The third criterion pertains to a judgement made by "reasonable persons" of the United States as a whole, while the first two pertain to that of members of the local community. Due to the larger scope of the third test, it is a more ambiguous criterion than the first two."
--various Wikipedia pages
It makes perfect sense that the only two people fit to judge what ghawd would find to be 'beyond the pale' would be the individual doing the viewing (as a community of one) and Rusty Milhous Nelson, ghawd's spokes-hole here on Earth.
Each individual ought to be able to decide if keeping his eyes and ears open to a live presentation, photograph or video is the right thing to do. And if there is any doubt, the matter should be discussed with Rusty. That's part of his job here!
I will grant that until the ripe old age of "Consent", 8 years old, parents ought to have a free hand in terms of judging for the sweet little spirits entrusted to their care. Upon attaining the age of 8, kids should be left to reason it out for themselves.
There should be a small but fertile bumper-sticker industry the wide world over, in which appropriate variations on the theme, "I know what's best for me!" are mass-produced for the consuming public.
Who among us has not awoken on a Sunday morning, still a glowing cinder from the passions of the evening before? The experience of having one's passions melt every restraint one ever imagined existed is a consummation devoutly to be wished, as I believe Joseph Smith mentioned during more than a few of his honeymoons.