Issuing a landmark five-to-four decision in the case of Miller v California, a mail-order business 
specialising in adult materials that sent out graphic and explicit catalogues that opened by the owner and his mother of a beachfront restaurant and reported the offending brochure to authorities, the US Supreme Court formulated a three-pronged standard used as a benchmark for determining whether or not material material is obscene and therefore not a category of protected speech under the First Amendment. For a work to be obscene, it must meet all three conditions: whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards” would find it overall an appeal to prurient interests, whether in a patently offensive manner it depicts sexual conduct, and whether over all is lacking in any serious literary, political, scientific or artistic value. The dissenting opinion worried because the test called for serious value, merit and allowed for community standards—without definition or the purview to set one—that this precedent would enable greater censorship.
synchronoptic
one year ago: a pioneering parachutist (1913), the US Supreme Court weighs in on flag burning plus assorted links worth revisiting
two years ago: the Stonehenge Free Festival (1974), LPs introduced (1948) plus Return to Oz (1985)
three years ago: International Yoga Day, machine designed fragrances, a wrongful accusation righted, a tapestry generator, fighting Facebook’s hegemony plus the Satellite News Channel (1982)
four years ago: Midsommar traditions plus vintage Hungarian stationary
