Originally Posted by rrz518
This being the United States of America and all, let me clarify our laws: The sale of Penthouse/Playboy etc. is forbidden to anyone under 18. It is by definition pornography. Sorry, your personal opinion doesn't count, the law is the law. If you don't like the law, then get right out there and get it changed.
To expose anyone, 14 or otherwise, to pornography against their wishes is ranges from distasteful to disgusting. Look the other way? Sorry, that doesn't fly.
There is no such federal law. Some municipalities
may have ordinances determining what cannot be exposed on a newstand - for example a very graphic magazine cover - but I am not even sure that is true.
http://censorware.net/essays/obscene_jt.html
"Pornography" is a layperson's term, with no particular legal significance. Jones may believe that Penthouse is non-pornographic, while Smith believes that it is. Neither is incorrect.
The term of legal significance is "obscenity", which, after struggling for many years and through many cases, the U.S. Supreme Court defined in Miller v. California in 1973. It is a three-part test, as follows:
"The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be:
(a) whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards" would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, Kois v. Wisconsin, supra, at 230, quoting Roth v. United States, supra, at 489;
(b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and
(c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."
Anything judged to be "obscene" by a court of law cannot be sold to anyone anywhere.
No single person can make that judgement.
Of course it is section (c) which makes it hard to use someone's or some group's defintion or perception to actually censor or make illegal what might offend you.
Other than these exceptions, your post was quite informative.