What Wrong with This Sentence?
What’s wrong with this sentence:
“I checked the U.S. Constitution, particularly the First Amendment. Nowhere could I find the part that says you are entitled to dirty pictures.”
This is the terrible legacy of Roe v. Wade. Whether it’s dildos in Alabama, or abortion in South Dakota, two generations of Americans now labor under the misapprehension that the right to do X, Y, or Z must be found in the US Constitution, and failing that, the state has the unlimited right to regulate or even ban X, Y, or Z.
Show me in the Constitution where the state has the right to prohibit the sale of dildos. Failing that, show me in just what way the state has a compelling interest in regulating the sale of dildos.
I’m not holding my breath.
March 1st, 2007 at 3:16 pm
What’s frustrating is that “the part that says you are entitled to dirty pictures” could hardly be written in clearer language.
“Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech”
What I don’t see in that amendment is a “however”, “but”, or “except” that would somehow render constitutional the current laws regulating and prohibiting “indecency” and “obscenity”, the censorship powers of the FCC, or half of the crap the Bush Administration pulls.
One could even argue that anti-obscenity legislation even suffers the double whammy of violating the establishment clause as well, since the only basis for such legislation is religious morality and thus it certainly seems like the establishment of religion to me.
I don’t think it has anything to do with Roe v. Wade though - this stuff goes back a lot farther than that. The 9th and 10th amendments were all but forgotten the day after they were written, and our self appointed morality police have been at this since the invention of the paperback novel.