A Republican senator has introduced a bill titled “S.1671 – A bill to define “obscenity” for purposes of the Communications Act of 1934, and for other purposes”.
The bill has been introduced by Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), making it the latest in right-wing attacks against media (a Republican bill in Texas which could have potentially made watching Goblin Slayer a felony has been stalled in the state legislature earlier this year).
Currently, media is given a lot of leeway when it comes to explicit, grotesque, or otherwise potentially objectionable content. This leeway has allowed Americans to create and produce nearly whatever we want with only a few exceptions. Currently, a law against “obscenity exists in the form of The Communications Act of 1934.
While restrictions on obscenity are still on the books, some consider them to be unenforceable for First Amendment reasons; and currently obscenity is defined by what’s called “The Miller Test”. The Miller Test is a series of three qualifications which potentially remove First Amendment protections from potentially obscene speech.
- Whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards”, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest
- Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law
- Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
The nebulous nature of the test has given media a relatively free pass, but should existing laws become more readily enforceable, it could have a chilling effect on video games and anime. After all, didn’t Jack Thompson and other moral puritans of the late 20th century consider video games to “lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value”?
Currently, the full text of the bill is unavailable. But you can keep up to date with the status of the bill here.
