Porn

Pornography is defined as any “material (such as writings, photographs, or movies) depicting sexual activity or erotic behavior in a way that is designed to arouse sexual excitement” (Harchuck 2015, 13). Pornography is protected by the First Amendment, making it different from obscenity, which is speech about sex that falls outside First Amendment protections (Heins 1993). The line between pornography and obscenity is a thin one, and the US Supreme Court struggled throughout the twentieth century to define obscenity in legally precise ways (Strub 2010, 2013). The 1973 Supreme Court decision in Miller v. California (413 U.S. 15 (1973)) affirmed the place of local community standards for judging whether a text or image is obscene and maintained that such material must lack any “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value,” establishing the legal standard that continues to be used today.