Word: prurients
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...inciting anti-social conduct. Roth also carefully declared: "Sex and obscenity are not synonymous." And in later cases, the court refused to censor sexual expression unless 1) "the material is utterly without redeeming social importance," 2) "the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest" in the "average" adult, and 3) "the material is patently offensive because it affronts contemporary community standards," meaning national standards defined by the Supreme Court...
...Rules. In the second case, New York Pornographer Edward Mishkin argued that his books were not legally obscene because they excited only sick rather than normal people. Brennan agreed-and duly "adjusted" Roth's prurient-appeal standard from the "average adult" to the average members of any "probable recipient group," including sadists and masochists...
...cleared Fanny Hill, Brennan noted expert testimony in the Massachusetts trial that Fanny "belongs to the history of English literature rather than the history of smut." All the same, added Brennan, in an apparent invitation to further litigation, "evidence that the book was commercially exploited for the sake of prurient appeal, to the exclusion of all other values, might justify the conclusion that the book was utterly without redeeming social value...
...book or film need not have a "prurient appeal" to the public at large to be declared obscene. It can be so judged even if it panders merely to a "clearly defined deviant sexual group," such as homosexuals or masochists...
...which a publication is advertised does not affect its content. The other tests for obscenity, that the work appeals to "prurient interests," that it is "patently offensive," and that it is "without redeeming social value," all refer directly to the substance of the material. But the advertising criterion is a tacit admission by the Court that it cannot draw a clear distinction between a work that is obscene and one that is not on the strength of the material itself. If a book is not "patently offensive," how can the way in which it is publicized make...