[Winona] Defining, establishing contemporary community standards

[Steve Schild Winona Online Democracy]

[Winona Online Democracy]

The issue of contemporary community standards is one of the most 
complicated--and most misunderstood--elements of current obscenity law, as 
evidenced by this statement on a Winona Online Democracy exchange:

"To my recollection, the Supreme Court has ruled that obscenity is to be
defined by the community. Well...this is your opportunity to help define
what's obscene in Winona."

That statement implies that Winonans could establish an obscenity standard 
specific to Winona, a standard that could differ, say, from one in Houston, 
Minn. That's not true. The following passage from The Law of Mass 
Communications: Freedom and Control of Print and Broadcast Media (eighth 
edition), by Dwight L. Teeter Jr. and Don R. LeDuc, quotes a U.S. Supreme 
Court ruling concerning a case (Jenkins vs. Georgia) in which a theater 
manager was convicted of violating state obscenity law after showing the film 
Carnal Knowledge. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned that conviction. Why? 
Because, the textbook tells us, "In essence, the Court was saying that 
although it was now willing to accept the fact that 'contemporary community 
standards' regarding sexual matters might vary to some extent from region to 
region, there could be no finding of obscenity anywhere in the United States 
unless the material in question could reasonably be considered to be obscene."

The Teeter and LeDuc text cites another case (Pope vs. Illinois), in which 
Justice White, writing for the majority, concluded, "Just as the ideas a work 
represent need not obtain majority approval to merit protection, neither, 
insofar as the First Amendment is concerned, does the value of a work vary 
from community to community based on the degree of local acceptance it has 
won. The proper inquiry is . . . whether a reasonable person would find such 
value in the material, taken as a whole." More simply put, Teeter and LeDuc 
conclude that Justice White's message was that "'artistic value' was not a 
relative term that each community could be permitted to establish for itself."

If you're still reading this, thanks for sticking with me through that thicket 
of legalistic prose. I think it's very important that we understand we cannot 
ban something simply because some people, or, for that matter, lots of people, 
don't like it.

Steve Schild 

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