Obscenity was Re: [governance] Open Ltr. ...

[Avri Doria]

On 1 Aug 2009, at 20:14, Eric Dierker wrote:

> A wise Chief Justice of the US Supremes once pointed out "I do not  
> know the definition of obscenity, but I know it when I see it." (or  
> some such thing)

> Well I have just seen it again. The interchange between Doria  
> and       . Making disgustingly disparaging remarks
...
> That kind of hate speech should be censored here.

1 Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197 (1964) - Associate Justice  
Justice Potter Stewart  (never chief and i don't judge wisdom)

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 . . . "[1]

and some other definitions from: http://www.brainyquote.com/words/ob/obscenity195426.html

Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant  
magistrate.
Bertrand Russell

Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the  
murk.
Henry Miller

Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life,  
is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth  
new food, which it devours in secret.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Since obscenity is the truth of our passion today, it is the only  
stuff of art - or almost the only stuff.
David Herbert Lawrence

The justices have constitutionally protected obscenity in libraries,  
filth over cable television, and now unlimited internet pornography.
Phyllis Schlafly

You have to show violence the way it is. If you don't show it  
realistically, then that's immoral and harmful. If you don't upset  
people, then that's obscenity.
Roman Polanski

Obscenity is a moral concept in the verbal arsenal of the  
establishment, which abuses the term by applying it, not to  
expressions of its own morality but to those of another.
Herbert Marcuse

Commercial speech is like obscenity... we can't seem to define it, but  
we know it when we see it.
Jef I. Richards

Sex and obscenity are not synonymous. Obscene material is material  
which deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest.
William J. Brennan, Jr.


at the risk for further branding (and taring and feathering) i have  
always been partial to Marcuse.

a.


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