Home > West's Encyclopedia of American Law > Obscenity

The character or quality of being obscene; an act, utterance, or item tending to corrupt the public morals by its indecency or lewdness.

Obscenity is a legal term that applies to anything offensive to morals and is often equated with the term PORNOGRAPHY. Pornography, however, is a more limited term, which refers to the erotic content of books, magazines, films, and recordings. Obscenity includes pornography, but may also include nude dancing, sexually oriented commercial telephone messages, and scatological comedy routines. U.S. courts have had a difficult time determining what is obscene. This problem has serious implications, because if an act or an item is deemed obscene, it is not protected by the FIRST AMENDMENT.

Until the mid-nineteenth century and the Victorian era in Great Britain and the United States, sexually explicit material was...