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Obscenity is art that is subject to legal prohibition, most often due to the sexual or erotic content of the work to be banned. A work that contains or consists of obscenity is said to be obscene. The legal definition of obscenity varies in different jurisdictions, and has been different at different times. In some times and places works with disfavored political content have been labeled "obscene".

[edit] Obscenity in US law

[edit] Miller Test

In the United States, laws banning obscene content are governed by Miller v. California (1973) in which the US Supreme Court laid down the famous "three-part test" also known as the "Miller test" This provided that a work may not by judged obscene (and therefore prohibited) unless:

• The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, and
• The work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law, and
• The work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Note that the standard in the first part of the test is a local one, which may vary from community to community, while the standard in the third part "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" is a national one.

Note also that not everything to which this standard could apply will necessarily be obscene in a particular state. The test specifies the maximum limits to which a state may go in defining obscenity. But individual state laws vary, and under the second part of the "Miller test" the state law must be specific in what it prohibits. A state may choose not to prohibit as obscene works which could have been prohibited under the Miller test.

[edit] Former tests

Prior to the Miller decision, various tests were applied in US law to define what is "obscene" and to determine what may be legally prohibited (given the US First Amendment provisions protecting speech and the press) These included:

• The Hicklin test: "the effect of isolated passages upon the most susceptible persons". (British common law, cited in Regina v. Hicklin, 1868. LR 3 QB 360 - overturned when Michigan passed a law banning all printed matter that would 'corrupt the morals of youth' in Butler v. State of Michigan 352 U.S. 380 (1957))
• The Wepplo test: "If material has a substantial tendency to deprave or corrupt its readers by inciting lascivious thoughts or arousing lustful desires." (People v. Wepplo, 78 Cal.App.2d Supp. 959, 178 P.2d 853).
• The Roth test: "Whether to the average person applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest". (Roth v. United States 354 U.S. 476 (1957) - overturned by Miller)
• Roth-Jacobellis: "community standards" applicable to an obscenity are national, not local standards. Material that may be banned is "utterly without redeeming social importance". (Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 US 184 (1964) - famous quote: "I shall not today attempt further to define [hardcore pornography] ...But I know it when I see it".)

Roth-Jacobellis-Memoirs: Modified Roth-Jacobellis by adding that the material to be banned possesses "not a modicum of social value". (A Book Named John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure v. Attorney General of Massachusetts, 383 U.S. 413 (1966))

[edit] Non-legal meaning

In more general use, people speak of something as "obscene" that is disgusting, revolting, or shocking, as in "obscene profits" or the like. This is actually the earlier sense of the word, but the legal meaning is now the dominant one, and has strongly influenced the more general meaning.

[edit] See also

• Obscenity on Wikipedia
• obscene in Wiktionary