Obscenity isn't covered by the first amendment
You're right, but Mike Lee wants to make the guidelines for what is considered obscene more vague, which would result in criminalizing more than just explicit porn. Any kind of nudity would be affected under his definition.
This is what they look like now:
In his majority opinion,
Chief Justice Warren Burger outlined what he called “guidelines” for jurors in obscenity cases. These guidelines are the three prongs of the Miller test. They are:
- (1) whether the average person applying contemporary community standards would find the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;
- (2) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and
- (3) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
Mike Lee wants to change the 2nd prong to read:
Defines “obscenity” within the Communications Act of 1934 as content that:
o (i) taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest in nudity, sex, or excretion,
o (ii)
depicts, describes or represents actual or simulated sexual acts with the objective intent to
arouse, titillate, or gratify the sexual desires of a person, and,
o (iii) taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
arstechnica.com
