The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in the case of U.S. vs Little a dangerous precedent. They stated that obscenity is defined by the local community standard, not a national one.

I’d like to take a moment here to point out that what they are speaking of is obscenity. There’s some very peculiar laws surrounding that whole concept in the United States Code. The general idea, however, is that the law doesn’t define what is or isn’t obscene – that follows the Miller test

The reason this precedent is dangerous is because Paul Little is producing material in California, available for mail order over the internet, that people in Tampa, Florida found obscene. With the local community standard applied, Federal charges were able to be levied against him. The end result is that if any state law exists to specify obscenity, and a community holds something to be obscene, and it doesn’t look like art – its illegal. No matter where the work was produced or distributed.

The evidence was even gathered by a postmaster ordering the material in question and having it delivered online! If that doesn’t smack of entrapment and collusion, I don’t know what does.

What I really don’t understand is this: How hard is ‘Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech‘ to understand? It’s pretty clear. There’s no ambiguity there. So how did ‘except for obscenity’ slip in somehow?

One defense I haven’t seen used yet in these cases is one of the core principles of law: that laws must be consistently applied. If there are so many things that are obscene out there, why is this one man being singled out and targeted? Shouldn’t half the United States be in there with him for having possessed, transported, or distributed this material?

Why are we letting legal precedents regarding morality from the 1940′s persist? Why are we, as citizens, permitting this to occur? When did we let McCarthy into our bedrooms, and why aren’t we getting him out?