Every time people discuss the Castillo case or any case with comics on trial, the everlasting gobstopper seems to be, “Well, it was obscene and therefore not protected by the First Amendment.”
Here’s a nutty thought:
That should not be the case.
I don’t care that it *is* the case. Once upon a time, the case was that it was okay to own people as property. Once upon a time, the case was that was okay for women not to be able to vote. Things change.
Obscenity is an expression of thoughts and ideas. As such, it can and should be as entitled to First Amendment protection as any other thoughts and ideas. That obscenity is thoughts and ideas that many people find repulsive is utterly beside the point. Was the idea of school integration any less repulsive to many people fifty years ago? You may say that people were being deprived of their God-given rights in that instance. Well so too are people being deprived of rights here: They are being deprived of their rights, as adults, to make adult choices as to the kind of entertainment they wish to peruse.
You may not *like* material some would deem obscene. Nor do I. But the First Amendment wasn’t created to protect popular material that everyone likes. It was created to protect material that people *don’t* like. And the fact that obscenity is so fluid a concept that what one person considers trash, another considers art, shows the incredibly slippery slope embarked upon when one attempts to regulate it. Why? Because it’s an endeavor by a court to regulate and quantify perceptions, ideas, and personal taste, and that never, ever works.
It is grossly unfair to elevate one person’s perceptions above the other in an attempt to disenfranchise one person or person’s artistic tastes. Why is it that if I want to look at something but my neighbors don’t, the courts can decide I’m not allowed to? Pursuit of entertainment should be regulated entirely by what the marketplace will bear, not the personal morality of people who may well not even constitute the majority opinion.
Of course, there’s the highly debatable notion that reading obscenity might cause people to go out and commit violently pornographic acts. And John Lennon’s murderer had a copy of “Catcher in the Rye” in his back pocket, so let’s round up J.D. Salinger. The moment you begin to argue that ideas and stories should be restricted or eliminated because of what people *might* do as a result of it, you open up a Pandora’s box of potential censorship which will sit just fine with those people who love deciding what you should be allowed to read, but is far less attractive to the rest of us. (And no, I’m not lumping in how-to manuals about bomb construction and the like. I’m focusing on entertainment, not material specifically designed to deprive others of life and/or property, okay?)
Obscene material should be entitled to First Amendment protection. There’s no reason for it not to be aside from puritanical intolerance.
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