[pessimizer]

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.

[nvm0n2]

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.

[pessimizer]

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.