>Somehow in the frenzy leading up to Tuesday’s presidential election, we missed this item on Huffington Post from our friend, Theresa Darklady Reed, in which she points us to a prediction from the extreme religious right that an Obama presidency will lead to a nation with unfettered access to pornography.
Quoting from a Focus on the Family screed obstensibly written in the future, the as-yet hypothetical Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America, the many potential dangers awaiting us down the road include a new, liberal Supreme Court that has :
… applied more broadly the “Miller test” from the 1973 decision in Miller v. California, by which a work could not be found obscene unless “the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, and scientific value.” In the 2011 decision, the court essentially found that any pornographic work had some measure of “serious artistic value,” at least according to some observers, and thus any censorship of pornographic material was an unconstitutional restriction on the First Amendment.
But wait–there’s more! As “…all city and county laws restricting pornography were struck down by this decision …pornographic magazines are openly displayed in gas stations, grocery stores and on newsstands (as they have been in some European countries for several years).”
And, natch, the court also eliminated all FCC restrictions and, thusly, “…television programs at all hours of the day contain explicit portrayals of sexual acts.”
We might observe that a mere “D” by a leader’s name doesn’t necessarily translate into a laissez faire approach to the exchange of ideas–President Clinton was the one who signed the Communications Decency Act into law back in 1996, afterall. But if we listen to those with a proclaimed relationship to the powers on high, free speech advocates need just kick back a bit and wait for the flood-gates to open.
