Obscenity: An Unsettled Subject in Constitutional Law

As I was doing some reading for my American Constitutional Law class, I found the chapter on Freedom of the Press to be particularly interesting. One of the main topics that was addressed was the First Amendment protection (or lack thereof) afforded to obscene speech. The idea of obscenity as addressed in this book made me think of two very interesting aspects of obscenity in the context of contemporary American society.

First of all, obscenity must be one of the hardest things to regulate and to dictate constitutional parameters for restricting. One of the reasons there is so much grey area when it comes to this topic is because obscenity is not, in fact, written into the First Amendment (or anywhere in the Bill of Rights). This makes it extremely difficult for the Court to regulate the extent to which it is or is not allowed to regulate obscenity. While it is universally agreed that the Court may regulate obscenity (see Miller v. California), the actual definition of obscenity is itself nearly impossible to come to agreement upon. People of different age groups, different cultures, different occupations, different sexual orientations, different gender, and different religion may all judge obscenity differently based on any (or all) of these defining demographics. For example, a 25-year old bachelor living in New York City might have no problem with a gentleman’s club opening across the street from his apartment, while the nuns and the congregation at the Catholic Church two blocks away from the club may have extreme objections to it, labeling it obscene and immoral.

The second observation that I made while posting my previous post about Laura Bush is just how exposed and how easily accessible indecent material is through the internet. When I did a Google image search for pictures of Laura Bush to post on my blog, one of the first pictures that showed up was a doctored photo of George W. Bush and Laura Bush with Laura’s wearing no underwear or pants, exposing her genital area. This is offensive to me, but I’m sure it would be even more offensive or scarring to young children doing a class report on Laura Bush or an elderly person just looking for some nice photos of the First Lady.

While obscenity is at least tangibly possible to regulate in newspapers and in the print media, how is it possible to regulate the World Wide Web, which (just like it sounds) is worldwide in its nature and may not have any listed or known authors? Or is this even possible? The Internet has provided us with boundless information about any subject we could ever think of, but at the same time it has also brought obscenity and highly offensive material to a much higher level and lent it greater accessibility, even to those who are not looking for such a thing.