t took a Johnson County, Kansas Grand Jury all day to figure out that a fairly cubist statue of a nude or partially nude hiker girl taking a picture of herself isn't obscene - and to me, the real news is that it took all day to reach that conclusion. Here's the story and what I had to say about it.
http://www.kshb.com/dpp/news/region_...ue-not-obscene
It took them all day to come to the conclusion that this highly stylized work that suggests vanity and narcissism, self-adultation and self-worship - which is after all the root of all of the problems that' have plagued humanity from the start - possesses serious artistic value? (And the absence of that "serious value" is one of the three things that must be proven to render any work obscene. No matter how prurient the appeal of the work, no matter how shockingly and patently the work offends contemporary community norms of what is permissible or accepted, IF it possesses serious artistic value, it cannot be obscene. Why? Because our Patriot forefathers correctly came to the judgment that all of society itself would become the victim - if any expression that adds to the debate about the basic questions about humanity - could be outlawed, criminalized, and taken out of society's view. That's a distinctively American value, what we invented, and what sets us apart from the rest of the world. Remember, it was a Statue of Liberty our immigrant ancestors looked up to when they arrived in New York harbor, not a Statue of "Decency".)
One hundred and fifty years ago, my Great Grandfather, then 16, was fighting insurgents all through Kansas in the Civil War, and forty years ago, I left 30 pounds behind as I trained to become an Army officer at Fort Riley. I'd like to think that we, and all of the others who've served in the military to protect American values, were fighting/serving for exactly this same right of every American to freely express and communicate their point of view through any means that can affect minds. Bravo to the Grand Jury. It's only tragic that the decision was not obvious to them in ten minutes.
Read about what obscenity is and is not here:
http://www.xxxlaw.com/obscenity/index.html