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by nvm0n2 1022 days ago
That could be. It's not clear from the note what movie is being referred to. The lack of context makes it harder to interpret.

The last post reflects ideological values, but appears to be a factually unambiguous claim about US law. The images show cartoons of men sucking each other's dicks. In law "obscene" is used to mean something like "overtly sexual", which at least the first book clearly meets.
2 comments
pessimizer 1022 days ago
No, obscene doesn't mean that. Obscene material is illegal material, not adults-only material.

edit: so saying that the books depicted explicit sexual acts would be indisputable, but the determination that the books were obscene would happen in court. And if drawings of two people sucking each other's dicks were judged obscene, a lot of things would instantly become illegal in that jurisdiction.

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nvm0n2 1022 days ago
That's a circular definition (the law is defining what's illegal, so the category it defines cannot itself be defined as that which is illegal). Though the actual legal definition in the USA isn't much better.

I think the claim in question is about the first amendment issue. If the material was judged obscene then it could still be allowed, or disallowed, or disallowed in some contexts (i.e. schools, what's in dispute here) but such laws wouldn't get tripped up by the bill of rights.

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pessimizer 1022 days ago
It's not a circular definition. "Obscene" is a term used for content that has been deemed illegal. It is not a general term for sexual content. It is not a term for content that is illegal sometimes but not other times. It is not a euphemism for material that is restricted to adult consumption, or for explicit pornography.

more charitably, but still repetitious: when one says that something is obscene, that's saying that it should be illegal in any context; that it has no value. A drawing of two people sucking each others dicks has surely met that bar in the past - information about birth control has met that bar in the past. But I do not think the suggestion was that drawings of gay men having sex should be illegal, what was being suggested was that it is not appropriate for children. That's not a question of obscenity.

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enragedcacti 1022 days ago
Obscene in the context of the first amendment protections is defined by the Miller test regardless of how any laws define obscenity. The third prong alone is a high bar to clear in this case and its what makes the claim far from factually unambiguous imo.

> Whether a reasonable person finds that the matter, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

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nvm0n2 1022 days ago
It's meant to be an educational text, no? It doesn't seem to fit any of those categories.
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enragedcacti 1022 days ago
They are not categories, they are contexts, and educational texts can have value within any or all of those contexts. In fact being educational or informative could inherently be considered to be of literary value.

Many people rightfully complain about the lack of specificity and clarity in the third prong, but that is even more evidence for why it is a bad community note because there is obvious room for interpretation and the note leaves none. Thus, even if you agree with its conclusion, it lacks sufficient context which is one of the voting criteria.

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