This Week for Happy Hour: Drink For Freedom

On June 24^th, 1957, a sad thing happened: the Supreme Court ruled in Roth v. U.S. that obscenity was not protected by the First Amendment freedom of speech.  The Court defined obscenity as material whose "dominant theme taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest" to the "average person, applying contemporary community standards."  Roth v. United States, The Bluebook Blows (1957). 

This test was later clarified to provide specific protection for sexually oriented material that also had literary, artistic, scientific, or political value.  So, for example, this elementary school drawing would NOT be considered obscene because it is educational in nature, reaching beyond mere sexual offensiveness to somewhere in the artistic/scientific (albeit disturbing) realm:

Georgia O'Keeffe, Age 6

But I just love how the Supreme Court ended up defining unprotected obscene speech.  They basically said that it is sexual material that turns you on, AND that it is patently offensive.  Does that seem odd to anyone else?  The Supreme Court Justices agreeing by majority decision that they are turned on by patently offensive material?  What was going on under those robes?  Loose skin and old balls, gross.

But I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that admission, really.  In fact, it has just inspired a Happy Hour.  Come to Rhino Bar for Happy Hour today, 5-9pm, and test the boundaries of your First Amendment rights.   

Got something on your mind, you’re not sure whether it’s obscene?  Don’t know if you should put Anthony’s Weiner or its equivalent on your Christmas card this year?  Bring in your material for discussion; we’ll put it to the crowd.   

And we’ll all enjoy half-price drinks and food, and plumb the depths of our prurient interests - creative, intriguing, and legally questionable as they may be - toasting in defiance of the obscenity of censorship.  We'll drink to freedom.  We'll drink to try to forget that now we agree with Ron Paul about something.  And we'll drink because, today, we all saw a second grader's drawing of a penis.  And there's no way to unsee that kind of thing, ever.  Eight-year-olds, Dude.

See you there!