Post by velocity on Dec 14, 2005 11:15:02 GMT -5
i want to make clear a few things for you to consider.
U.S. Constitution: First Amendment
'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.'
Obscenity .--Although public discussion of political affairs is at the core of the First Amendment, the guarantees of speech and press, it should have been noticed from the previous subsections, are broader. ''We do not accede to appellee's suggestion that the constitutional protection for a free press applies only to the exposition of ideas. The line between the informing and the entertaining is too elusive for the protection of that basic right.'' 1 The right to impart and to receive ''information and ideas, regardless of their social worth . . . is fundamental to our free society.'' 2 Indeed, 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. 3 However, this function is not the reason why obscenity is outside the protection of the First Amendment, although the Court has never really been clear about what that reason is.
Adjudication over the constitutional law of obscenity began in Roth v. United States, 4 in which the Court in an opinion by Justice Brennan settled in the negative the ''dispositive question'' ''whether obscenity is utterance within the area of protected speech and press.'' 5 The Court then undertook a brief historical survey to demonstrate that ''the unconditional phrasing of the First Amendment was not intended to protect every utterance.'' All or practically all of the States which ratified the First Amendment had laws making blasphemy or profanity or both crimes, and provided for prosecutions of libels as well. It was this history which had caused the Court in Beauharnais to conclude that ''libelous utterances are not within the area of constitutionally protected speech,'' and this history was deemed to demonstrate that ''obscenity, too, was outside the protection intended for speech and press.'' 6 ''The protection given speech and press was fashioned to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people . . . . All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance--unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion--have the full protection of the guaranties, unless excludable because they encroach upon the limited area of more important interests. But implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance.'' 7 It was objected that obscenity legislation punishes because of incitation to impure thoughts and without proof that obscene materials create a clear and present danger of antisocial conduct. But since obscenity was not protected at all, such tests as clear and present danger were irrelevant. 8
''However,'' Justice Brennan continued, ''sex and obscenity are not synonymous. Obscene material is material which deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest. The portrayal of sex, e.g., in art, literature and scientific works, is not itself sufficient reason to deny material the constitutional protection of freedom of speech and press . . . . It is therefore vital that the standards for judging obscenity safeguard the protection of freedom of speech and press for material which does not treat sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest.'' 9 The standard which the Court thereupon adopted for the designation of material as unprotected obscenity was ''whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest.'' 10 The Court defined material appealing to prurient interest as ''material having a tendency to excite lustful thoughts,'' and defined prurient interest as ''a shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion.'' 11
In the years after Roth, the Court struggled with many obscenity cases with varying degrees of success. The cases can be grouped topically, but with the exception of those cases dealing with protec tion of children, 12 unwilling adult recipients, 13 and procedure, 14 these cases are best explicated chronologically.
Manual Enterprises v. Day 15 upset a Post Office ban upon the mailing of certain magazines addressed to homosexual audiences, but resulted in no majority opinion of the Court. Nor did a majority opinion emerge in Jacobellis v. Ohio, in which conviction for exhib iting a motion picture was reversed. 16 Chief Justice Warren's concurrence in Roth 17 was adopted by a majority in Ginzburg v. United States, 18 in which Justice Brennan for the Court held that in ''close'' cases borderline materials could be determined to be obscene if the seller ''pandered'' them in a way that indicated he was catering to prurient interests. The same five-Justice majority, with Justice Harlan concurring, the same day affirmed a state conviction of a distributor of books addressed to a sado-masochistic audience, applying the ''pandering'' test and concluding that material could be held legally obscene if it appealed to the prurient interests of the deviate group to which it was directed. 19 Unanimity was shattered, however, when on the same day the Court held that Fanny Hill, a novel at that point 277 years old, was not legally obscene. 20 The prevailing opinion again restated the Roth tests that, to be considered obscene, material must (1) have a dominant theme in the work considered as a whole that appeals to prurient interest, (2) be patently offensive because it goes beyond contemporary community standards, and (3) be utterly without redeeming social value. 21
After the divisions engendered by the disparate opinions in the three 1966 cases, the Court over the next several years submerged its differences by per curiam dispositions of nearly three dozen cases, in all but one of which it reversed convictions or civil determinations of obscenity. The initial case was Redrup v. New York, 22 in which, after noting that the cases involved did not present special questions requiring other treatment, such as concern for juve niles, protection of unwilling adult recipients, or proscription of pandering, 23 the Court succinctly summarized the varying positions of the seven Justices in the majority and said: ''[w]hichever of the constitutional views is brought to bear upon the cases before us, it is clear that the judgments cannot stand . . . .'' 24 And so things went for several years. 25
Changing membership on the Court raised increasing speculation about the continuing vitality of Roth; it seemed unlikely the Court would long continue its Redrup approach. 26 The change when it occurred strengthened the powers of government, federal, state, and local, to outlaw or restrictively regulate the sale and dissemination of materials found objectionable, and developed new standards for determining which objectionable materials are legally obscene.
At the end of the October 1971 Term, the Court requested argument on the question whether the display of sexually oriented films or of sexually oriented pictorial magazines, when surrounded by notice to the public of their nature and by reasonable protection against exposure to juveniles, was constitutionally protected. 27 By a five-to- four vote the following Term, the Court in Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton adhered to the principle established in Roth that obscene material is not protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments even if access is limited to consenting adults. 28 Chief Justice Burger for the Court observed that the States have wider interests than protecting juveniles and unwilling adults from exposure to pornography; legitimate state interests, effectuated through the exercise of the police power, exist in protecting and improving the quality of life and the total community environment, in improving the tone of commerce in the cities, and in protecting public safety. It matters not that the States may be acting on the basis of unverifiable assumptions in arriving at the decision to suppress the trade in pornography; the Constitution does not require in the context of the trade in ideas that governmental courses of action be subject to empirical verification any more than it does in other fields. Nor does the Constitution embody any concept of laissez faire, or of privacy, or of Millsean ''free will,'' that curbs governmental efforts to suppress pornography. 29
In Miller v. California, 30 the Court then undertook to enunciate standards by which unprotected pornographic materials were to be identified. Because of the inherent dangers in undertaking to regulate any form of expression, laws to regulate pornography must be carefully limited; their scope is to be confined ''to works which depict or describe sexual conduct.'' That conduct must be specifically defined by the applicable statute, whether as written or as authoritatively construed by the courts. 31 The law ''must also be limited to works which, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest in sex, which portray sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and which, taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.'' 32 The standard that a work must be ''utterly without redeeming social value'' before it may be suppressed was disavowed and discarded. In determining whether material appeals to a prurient interest or is patently offensive, the trier of fact, whether a judge or a jury, is not bound by a hypothetical national standard but may apply the local community standard where the trier of fact sits. 33 Prurient interest and patent offensiveness, the Court indicated, ''are essentially questions of fact.'' 34 By contrast, the third or ''value'' prong of the Miller test is not subject to a community standards test; instead, the appropriate standard is ''whether a reasonable person would find [literary, artistic, political, or scientific] value in the material, taken as a whole.'' 35 The Court in Miller reiterated that it was not permitting an unlimited degree of suppression of materials. Only ''hard core'' materials were to be deemed without the protection of the First Amendment; its idea of the content of ''hard core'' pornography was revealed in its example of the types of conduct that could not be portrayed: ''(a) Patently offensive representations or descriptions of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated. (b) Patently offensive representations or descriptions of masturbation, excretory functions, and lewd exhibition of the genitals.'' 36 Portrayal need not be limited to pictorial representation; books containing only descriptive language, no pictures, were subject to suppression under the standards. 37
First Amendment values, the Court stressed in Miller, ''are adequately protected by the ultimate power of appellate courts to conduct an independent review of constitutional claims when necessary.'' 38 But the Court had conferred on juries as triers of fact the determination, based upon their understanding of community standards, whether material was ''patently offensive.'' Did not this virtually immunize these questions from appellate review? In Jenkins v. Georgia, 39 the Court, while adhering to the Miller standards, stated that ''juries [do not] have unbridled discretion in determining what is 'patently offensive.''' Miller was intended to make clear that only ''hard-core'' materials could be suppressed and this concept and the Court's descriptive itemization of some types of hardcore materials were ''intended to fix substantive constitutional limitations, deriving from the First Amendment, on the type of material subject to such a determination.'' The Court's own viewing of the motion picture in question convinced it that ''[n]othing in the movie falls within either of the two examples given in Miller of material which may constitutionally be found to meet the 'patently offensive' element of those standards, nor is there anything sufficiently similar to such material to justify similar treatment.'' 40 But in a companion case, the Court found that a jury determination of obscenity ''was supported by the evidence and consistent with'' the standards. 41
The decisions from the Paris Adult Theatre and Miller era were rendered by narrow majorities, 42 but nonetheless have guided the Court since. There is no indication that the dissenting viewpoints in those cases will gain ascendancy in the foreseeable future; 43 if anything, government authority to define and regulate obscenity may be strengthened. Also, the Court's willingness to allow substantial regulation of non-obscene but sexually explicit or indecent expression reduces the importance (outside the criminal area) of whether material is classified as obscene.
Even as to materials falling within the constitutional definition of obscene, the Court has recognized a limited private, protected interest in possession within the home, 44 unless those materials constitute child pornography. Stanley v. Georgia was an appeal from a state conviction for possession of obscene films discovered in appellant's home by police officers armed with a search warrant for other items which were not found. Unanimously, 45 the Court reversed, holding that the mere private possession of obscene materials in the home cannot be made a criminal offense. The Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas, the Court said, regardless of their social value, and ''that right takes on an added dimension'' in the context of a prosecution for possession of something in one's own home. ''For also fundamental is the right to be free, except in very limited circumstances, from unwanted governmental intrusions into one's privacy.'' 46 Despite the unqualified assertion in Roth that obscenity was not protected by the First Amendment, the Court observed, it and the cases following were concerned with the governmental interest in regulating commercial distribution of obscene materials.'' Roth and the cases following that decision are not impaired by today's decision,'' the Court insisted, 47 but in its rejection of each of the state contentions made in support of the conviction the Court appeared to be rejecting much of the basis of Roth. First, there is no governmental interest in protecting an individual's mind from the effect of obscenity. Second, the absence of ideological content in the films was irrelevant, since the Court will not draw a line between transmission of ideas and entertainment. Third, there is no empirical evidence to support a contention that exposure to obscene materials may incite a person to antisocial conduct; even if there were such evidence, enforcement of laws proscribing the offensive conduct is the answer. Fourth, punishment of mere possession is not necessary to punishment of distribution. Fifth, there was little danger that private possession would give rise to the objections underlying a proscription upon public dissemination, exposure to children and unwilling adults. 48
Stanley's broad rationale has been given a restrictive reading, and the holding has been confined to its facts. Any possible implication that Stanley was applicable outside the home and recognized a right to obtain pornography or a right in someone to supply it was soon dispelled. 49 The Court has consistently rejected Stanley's theoretical underpinnings, upholding morality-based regulation of the behavior of consenting adults. 50 Also, Stanley has been held inapplicable to possession of child pornography in the home, the Court determining that the state interest in protecting children from sexual exploitation far exceeds the interest in Stanley of protecting adults from themselves. 51 Apparently for this reason, a state's conclusion that punishment of mere possession is a necessary or desirable means of reducing production of child pornography will not be closely scrutinized. 52
Child Pornography .--In New York v. Ferber, 53 the Court recognized another category of expression that is outside the coverage of the First Amendment, the pictorial representation of children in films or still photographs in a variety of sexual activities or exposures of the genitals. The basic reason such depictions could be prohibited was the governmental interest in protecting the physical and psychological well-being of children whose participation in the production of these materials would subject them to exploitation and harm. The state may go beyond a mere prohibition on the use of the children, because it is not possible to protect children adequately without prohibiting the exhibition and dissemination of the materials and advertising about them. Thus, ''the evil to be restricted so overwhelmingly outweighs the expressive interests, if any, at stake, that no process of case-by-case adjudication is required.'' 54 But, since expression is involved, government must carefully define what conduct is to be prohibited and may reach only ''works that visually depict sexual conduct by children below a specified age.'' 55
The reach of the state may even extend to private possession of child pornography in the home. In Osborne v. Ohio 56 the Court upheld a state law criminalizing the possession or viewing of child pornography as applied to someone who possessed such materials in his home. Distinguishing Stanley v. Georgia, the Court ruled that Ohio's interest in preventing exploitation of children far exceeded what it characterized as Georgia's ''paternalistic interest'' in protecting the minds of adult viewers of pornography. 57 Because of the greater importance of the state interest involved, the Court saw less need to require states to demonstrate a strong necessity for regulating private possession as well as commercial distribution and sale.
Non-obscene But Sexually Explicit and Indecent Expression .-- There is expression, either spoken or portrayed, which is offensive to some but is not within the constitutional standards of unprotected obscenity. Nudity portrayed in films or stills cannot be presumed obscene nor can offensive language ordinarily be punished simply because it offends someone. Nonetheless, govern ment may regulate sexually explicit but non-obscene expression in a variety of ways. Legitimate governmental interests may be furthered by appropriately narrow regulation, and the Court's view of how narrow regulation must be is apparently influenced not only by its view of the strength of the government's interest in regulation, but also by its view of the importance of the expression itself. In other words, sexually explicit expression does not receive the same degree of protection afforded purely political speech.
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. Also, government may take notice of objective conditions attributable to the commercialization of sexually explicit but non- obscene materials. Thus, the Court recognized a municipality's authority to zone land to prevent deterioration of urban areas, upholding an ordinance providing that ''adult theaters'' showing motion pictures that depicted ''specified sexual activities'' or ''specified anatomical areas'' could not be located within 100 feet of any two other establishments included within the ordinance or within 500 feet of a residential area. Similarly, an adult bookstore is subject to closure as a public nuisance if it is being used as a place for prostitution and illegal sexual activities, since the closure ''was directed at unlawful conduct having nothing to do with books or other expressive activity.'' However, a city was held constitutionally powerless to prohibit drive-in motion picture theaters from showing films containing nudity if the screen is visible from a public street or place. Also, the FCC was unable to justify a ban on transmission of ''indecent'' but not obscene telephone messages.
you can find all this information and much more here
caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment01/
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ok now that you have read that . it will make clear that what alot of these people are doing is not freedom of speech.
also to note, when ideas become actions of admission of harming children, it is most certainly NOT freedom of speech.
in other words if the subject has engaged with sexual attraction to achild and has told how a sexual act has been done by that subject, or talks of how to do it otherwise, is punishable as a serious federal felony, as well as state law (statues). so when you are trying to decide if this is a punishable crime of what a person says , and what he has done, or is doing, you will see where the line is drawn for freedom of speech.
please leave questions ina reply here. ill try to answer any you may have
that link again where you can find out everything about this topic can be found here
caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment01/
U.S. Constitution: First Amendment
'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.'
Obscenity .--Although public discussion of political affairs is at the core of the First Amendment, the guarantees of speech and press, it should have been noticed from the previous subsections, are broader. ''We do not accede to appellee's suggestion that the constitutional protection for a free press applies only to the exposition of ideas. The line between the informing and the entertaining is too elusive for the protection of that basic right.'' 1 The right to impart and to receive ''information and ideas, regardless of their social worth . . . is fundamental to our free society.'' 2 Indeed, 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. 3 However, this function is not the reason why obscenity is outside the protection of the First Amendment, although the Court has never really been clear about what that reason is.
Adjudication over the constitutional law of obscenity began in Roth v. United States, 4 in which the Court in an opinion by Justice Brennan settled in the negative the ''dispositive question'' ''whether obscenity is utterance within the area of protected speech and press.'' 5 The Court then undertook a brief historical survey to demonstrate that ''the unconditional phrasing of the First Amendment was not intended to protect every utterance.'' All or practically all of the States which ratified the First Amendment had laws making blasphemy or profanity or both crimes, and provided for prosecutions of libels as well. It was this history which had caused the Court in Beauharnais to conclude that ''libelous utterances are not within the area of constitutionally protected speech,'' and this history was deemed to demonstrate that ''obscenity, too, was outside the protection intended for speech and press.'' 6 ''The protection given speech and press was fashioned to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people . . . . All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance--unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion--have the full protection of the guaranties, unless excludable because they encroach upon the limited area of more important interests. But implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance.'' 7 It was objected that obscenity legislation punishes because of incitation to impure thoughts and without proof that obscene materials create a clear and present danger of antisocial conduct. But since obscenity was not protected at all, such tests as clear and present danger were irrelevant. 8
''However,'' Justice Brennan continued, ''sex and obscenity are not synonymous. Obscene material is material which deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest. The portrayal of sex, e.g., in art, literature and scientific works, is not itself sufficient reason to deny material the constitutional protection of freedom of speech and press . . . . It is therefore vital that the standards for judging obscenity safeguard the protection of freedom of speech and press for material which does not treat sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest.'' 9 The standard which the Court thereupon adopted for the designation of material as unprotected obscenity was ''whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest.'' 10 The Court defined material appealing to prurient interest as ''material having a tendency to excite lustful thoughts,'' and defined prurient interest as ''a shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion.'' 11
In the years after Roth, the Court struggled with many obscenity cases with varying degrees of success. The cases can be grouped topically, but with the exception of those cases dealing with protec tion of children, 12 unwilling adult recipients, 13 and procedure, 14 these cases are best explicated chronologically.
Manual Enterprises v. Day 15 upset a Post Office ban upon the mailing of certain magazines addressed to homosexual audiences, but resulted in no majority opinion of the Court. Nor did a majority opinion emerge in Jacobellis v. Ohio, in which conviction for exhib iting a motion picture was reversed. 16 Chief Justice Warren's concurrence in Roth 17 was adopted by a majority in Ginzburg v. United States, 18 in which Justice Brennan for the Court held that in ''close'' cases borderline materials could be determined to be obscene if the seller ''pandered'' them in a way that indicated he was catering to prurient interests. The same five-Justice majority, with Justice Harlan concurring, the same day affirmed a state conviction of a distributor of books addressed to a sado-masochistic audience, applying the ''pandering'' test and concluding that material could be held legally obscene if it appealed to the prurient interests of the deviate group to which it was directed. 19 Unanimity was shattered, however, when on the same day the Court held that Fanny Hill, a novel at that point 277 years old, was not legally obscene. 20 The prevailing opinion again restated the Roth tests that, to be considered obscene, material must (1) have a dominant theme in the work considered as a whole that appeals to prurient interest, (2) be patently offensive because it goes beyond contemporary community standards, and (3) be utterly without redeeming social value. 21
After the divisions engendered by the disparate opinions in the three 1966 cases, the Court over the next several years submerged its differences by per curiam dispositions of nearly three dozen cases, in all but one of which it reversed convictions or civil determinations of obscenity. The initial case was Redrup v. New York, 22 in which, after noting that the cases involved did not present special questions requiring other treatment, such as concern for juve niles, protection of unwilling adult recipients, or proscription of pandering, 23 the Court succinctly summarized the varying positions of the seven Justices in the majority and said: ''[w]hichever of the constitutional views is brought to bear upon the cases before us, it is clear that the judgments cannot stand . . . .'' 24 And so things went for several years. 25
Changing membership on the Court raised increasing speculation about the continuing vitality of Roth; it seemed unlikely the Court would long continue its Redrup approach. 26 The change when it occurred strengthened the powers of government, federal, state, and local, to outlaw or restrictively regulate the sale and dissemination of materials found objectionable, and developed new standards for determining which objectionable materials are legally obscene.
At the end of the October 1971 Term, the Court requested argument on the question whether the display of sexually oriented films or of sexually oriented pictorial magazines, when surrounded by notice to the public of their nature and by reasonable protection against exposure to juveniles, was constitutionally protected. 27 By a five-to- four vote the following Term, the Court in Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton adhered to the principle established in Roth that obscene material is not protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments even if access is limited to consenting adults. 28 Chief Justice Burger for the Court observed that the States have wider interests than protecting juveniles and unwilling adults from exposure to pornography; legitimate state interests, effectuated through the exercise of the police power, exist in protecting and improving the quality of life and the total community environment, in improving the tone of commerce in the cities, and in protecting public safety. It matters not that the States may be acting on the basis of unverifiable assumptions in arriving at the decision to suppress the trade in pornography; the Constitution does not require in the context of the trade in ideas that governmental courses of action be subject to empirical verification any more than it does in other fields. Nor does the Constitution embody any concept of laissez faire, or of privacy, or of Millsean ''free will,'' that curbs governmental efforts to suppress pornography. 29
In Miller v. California, 30 the Court then undertook to enunciate standards by which unprotected pornographic materials were to be identified. Because of the inherent dangers in undertaking to regulate any form of expression, laws to regulate pornography must be carefully limited; their scope is to be confined ''to works which depict or describe sexual conduct.'' That conduct must be specifically defined by the applicable statute, whether as written or as authoritatively construed by the courts. 31 The law ''must also be limited to works which, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest in sex, which portray sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and which, taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.'' 32 The standard that a work must be ''utterly without redeeming social value'' before it may be suppressed was disavowed and discarded. In determining whether material appeals to a prurient interest or is patently offensive, the trier of fact, whether a judge or a jury, is not bound by a hypothetical national standard but may apply the local community standard where the trier of fact sits. 33 Prurient interest and patent offensiveness, the Court indicated, ''are essentially questions of fact.'' 34 By contrast, the third or ''value'' prong of the Miller test is not subject to a community standards test; instead, the appropriate standard is ''whether a reasonable person would find [literary, artistic, political, or scientific] value in the material, taken as a whole.'' 35 The Court in Miller reiterated that it was not permitting an unlimited degree of suppression of materials. Only ''hard core'' materials were to be deemed without the protection of the First Amendment; its idea of the content of ''hard core'' pornography was revealed in its example of the types of conduct that could not be portrayed: ''(a) Patently offensive representations or descriptions of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated. (b) Patently offensive representations or descriptions of masturbation, excretory functions, and lewd exhibition of the genitals.'' 36 Portrayal need not be limited to pictorial representation; books containing only descriptive language, no pictures, were subject to suppression under the standards. 37
First Amendment values, the Court stressed in Miller, ''are adequately protected by the ultimate power of appellate courts to conduct an independent review of constitutional claims when necessary.'' 38 But the Court had conferred on juries as triers of fact the determination, based upon their understanding of community standards, whether material was ''patently offensive.'' Did not this virtually immunize these questions from appellate review? In Jenkins v. Georgia, 39 the Court, while adhering to the Miller standards, stated that ''juries [do not] have unbridled discretion in determining what is 'patently offensive.''' Miller was intended to make clear that only ''hard-core'' materials could be suppressed and this concept and the Court's descriptive itemization of some types of hardcore materials were ''intended to fix substantive constitutional limitations, deriving from the First Amendment, on the type of material subject to such a determination.'' The Court's own viewing of the motion picture in question convinced it that ''[n]othing in the movie falls within either of the two examples given in Miller of material which may constitutionally be found to meet the 'patently offensive' element of those standards, nor is there anything sufficiently similar to such material to justify similar treatment.'' 40 But in a companion case, the Court found that a jury determination of obscenity ''was supported by the evidence and consistent with'' the standards. 41
The decisions from the Paris Adult Theatre and Miller era were rendered by narrow majorities, 42 but nonetheless have guided the Court since. There is no indication that the dissenting viewpoints in those cases will gain ascendancy in the foreseeable future; 43 if anything, government authority to define and regulate obscenity may be strengthened. Also, the Court's willingness to allow substantial regulation of non-obscene but sexually explicit or indecent expression reduces the importance (outside the criminal area) of whether material is classified as obscene.
Even as to materials falling within the constitutional definition of obscene, the Court has recognized a limited private, protected interest in possession within the home, 44 unless those materials constitute child pornography. Stanley v. Georgia was an appeal from a state conviction for possession of obscene films discovered in appellant's home by police officers armed with a search warrant for other items which were not found. Unanimously, 45 the Court reversed, holding that the mere private possession of obscene materials in the home cannot be made a criminal offense. The Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas, the Court said, regardless of their social value, and ''that right takes on an added dimension'' in the context of a prosecution for possession of something in one's own home. ''For also fundamental is the right to be free, except in very limited circumstances, from unwanted governmental intrusions into one's privacy.'' 46 Despite the unqualified assertion in Roth that obscenity was not protected by the First Amendment, the Court observed, it and the cases following were concerned with the governmental interest in regulating commercial distribution of obscene materials.'' Roth and the cases following that decision are not impaired by today's decision,'' the Court insisted, 47 but in its rejection of each of the state contentions made in support of the conviction the Court appeared to be rejecting much of the basis of Roth. First, there is no governmental interest in protecting an individual's mind from the effect of obscenity. Second, the absence of ideological content in the films was irrelevant, since the Court will not draw a line between transmission of ideas and entertainment. Third, there is no empirical evidence to support a contention that exposure to obscene materials may incite a person to antisocial conduct; even if there were such evidence, enforcement of laws proscribing the offensive conduct is the answer. Fourth, punishment of mere possession is not necessary to punishment of distribution. Fifth, there was little danger that private possession would give rise to the objections underlying a proscription upon public dissemination, exposure to children and unwilling adults. 48
Stanley's broad rationale has been given a restrictive reading, and the holding has been confined to its facts. Any possible implication that Stanley was applicable outside the home and recognized a right to obtain pornography or a right in someone to supply it was soon dispelled. 49 The Court has consistently rejected Stanley's theoretical underpinnings, upholding morality-based regulation of the behavior of consenting adults. 50 Also, Stanley has been held inapplicable to possession of child pornography in the home, the Court determining that the state interest in protecting children from sexual exploitation far exceeds the interest in Stanley of protecting adults from themselves. 51 Apparently for this reason, a state's conclusion that punishment of mere possession is a necessary or desirable means of reducing production of child pornography will not be closely scrutinized. 52
Child Pornography .--In New York v. Ferber, 53 the Court recognized another category of expression that is outside the coverage of the First Amendment, the pictorial representation of children in films or still photographs in a variety of sexual activities or exposures of the genitals. The basic reason such depictions could be prohibited was the governmental interest in protecting the physical and psychological well-being of children whose participation in the production of these materials would subject them to exploitation and harm. The state may go beyond a mere prohibition on the use of the children, because it is not possible to protect children adequately without prohibiting the exhibition and dissemination of the materials and advertising about them. Thus, ''the evil to be restricted so overwhelmingly outweighs the expressive interests, if any, at stake, that no process of case-by-case adjudication is required.'' 54 But, since expression is involved, government must carefully define what conduct is to be prohibited and may reach only ''works that visually depict sexual conduct by children below a specified age.'' 55
The reach of the state may even extend to private possession of child pornography in the home. In Osborne v. Ohio 56 the Court upheld a state law criminalizing the possession or viewing of child pornography as applied to someone who possessed such materials in his home. Distinguishing Stanley v. Georgia, the Court ruled that Ohio's interest in preventing exploitation of children far exceeded what it characterized as Georgia's ''paternalistic interest'' in protecting the minds of adult viewers of pornography. 57 Because of the greater importance of the state interest involved, the Court saw less need to require states to demonstrate a strong necessity for regulating private possession as well as commercial distribution and sale.
Non-obscene But Sexually Explicit and Indecent Expression .-- There is expression, either spoken or portrayed, which is offensive to some but is not within the constitutional standards of unprotected obscenity. Nudity portrayed in films or stills cannot be presumed obscene nor can offensive language ordinarily be punished simply because it offends someone. Nonetheless, govern ment may regulate sexually explicit but non-obscene expression in a variety of ways. Legitimate governmental interests may be furthered by appropriately narrow regulation, and the Court's view of how narrow regulation must be is apparently influenced not only by its view of the strength of the government's interest in regulation, but also by its view of the importance of the expression itself. In other words, sexually explicit expression does not receive the same degree of protection afforded purely political speech.
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. Also, government may take notice of objective conditions attributable to the commercialization of sexually explicit but non- obscene materials. Thus, the Court recognized a municipality's authority to zone land to prevent deterioration of urban areas, upholding an ordinance providing that ''adult theaters'' showing motion pictures that depicted ''specified sexual activities'' or ''specified anatomical areas'' could not be located within 100 feet of any two other establishments included within the ordinance or within 500 feet of a residential area. Similarly, an adult bookstore is subject to closure as a public nuisance if it is being used as a place for prostitution and illegal sexual activities, since the closure ''was directed at unlawful conduct having nothing to do with books or other expressive activity.'' However, a city was held constitutionally powerless to prohibit drive-in motion picture theaters from showing films containing nudity if the screen is visible from a public street or place. Also, the FCC was unable to justify a ban on transmission of ''indecent'' but not obscene telephone messages.
you can find all this information and much more here
caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment01/
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ok now that you have read that . it will make clear that what alot of these people are doing is not freedom of speech.
also to note, when ideas become actions of admission of harming children, it is most certainly NOT freedom of speech.
in other words if the subject has engaged with sexual attraction to achild and has told how a sexual act has been done by that subject, or talks of how to do it otherwise, is punishable as a serious federal felony, as well as state law (statues). so when you are trying to decide if this is a punishable crime of what a person says , and what he has done, or is doing, you will see where the line is drawn for freedom of speech.
please leave questions ina reply here. ill try to answer any you may have
that link again where you can find out everything about this topic can be found here
caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment01/