Pornography vs. Modesty
People who write dictionaries do not decide what words should mean, they merely report the meanings in current use. Therefore, a survey of English dictionaries published over the years reveals the meaning of obscenity as used by English speaking people generally. An old definition from England held that obscene meant "immodest; not agreeable to chastity of mind." (Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, London, 1755.) The unassailable Oxford English dictionary says, "offensive to modesty or decency; expressing or suggesting unchaste or lustful ideas." (The Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford, 1933 edition.) For most Americans, the name Noah Webster is synonymous with the word dictionary. In his first (1828) edition, Webster defined obscene as "offensive to chastity and delicacy; impure; expressing or presenting to the mind or view something which delicacy, purity and decency forbid to be exposed." (An American Dictionary of the English Language (Unabridged), New York, 1828.) Webster published his own second edition in 1840, and in 1847 George and Charles Merriam published the third edition. In these editions the definition of obscene did not change. In 1909, the G. & C. Merriam Company introduced the New International dictionary. The "new" definition of obscene was "offensive to chastity of mind or to modesty; expressing to the mind or view something that delicacy, purity, and decency forbid to be exposed." (Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Springfield, Mass., 1936.) The leading abridgment of the New International is the Collegiate series of dictionaries. Until 1961, the Collegiate definition of obscene was "offensive to chastity or to modesty." (Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Co.: Springfield, Mass., 1961.) There have been other dictionaries in America, but all of them have been strikingly similar to Webster on the definition of obscene. The Standard series of dictionaries, written by Isaac Kouffman Funk in 1893 defined obscene as "offensive to chastity, delicacy or decency." The Century series of dictionaries, edited by William Dwight Whitney between 1889 and 1891 defined obscene as "offensive to modesty or decency, indecent." Even today, many dictionaries continue to give variations of that same definition. For example, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition, copyright 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company, which says "Offensive to accepted standards of decency or modesty." The Legal Definition In 1957, the U.S. Supreme Court formulated a new legal definition of obscenity. The Court’s decision in the case of Roth v. U.S. removed the religious doctrines of modesty and chastity from U.S. obscenity law. This created a new category of obscenity: material that is obscene by traditional scriptural standards, but not obscene under the new legal definition. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that “the Roth definition does not reflect the precise meaning of ‘obscene’ as traditionally used in the English language.... Pornographic material which is [legally] obscene forms a sub-group of all ‘obscene’ expression, but not the whole.” (Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, at 18 and 19, 1973.) It is a historical fact that the Biblical principles of modesty and chastity were upheld by this country's criminal code and judicial precedent from the day Columbus first set foot on American soil until the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Roth decision in 1957. For centuries, there was no strictly legal definition of obscenity. It was simply against the law to offend modesty or chastity in public in any way and people were sent to jail for doing so. It is not coincidental that during the late 1950s, Church leaders began condemning an increase of pornographic material in our society. A good example of this is Ezra Taft Benson's talk in the October 1959 General Conference. ("Call to Repentance," Improvement Era, Dec. 1959, pp. 956-959.) Today, because of the tremendous shift in standards that has occurred, most (if not all) of the material to which they then referred would not even come close to being legally obscene. Currently, pornographic material that cannot be condemned under the law is not legally pornographic. But it is important for all Christians to realize that changing its status with respect to the law doesn't change the nature of the material. Illegal or not, the material is just as obscene and harmful now as it ever was.
posted by R. Gary on 7/11/2010 07:15:00 PM
8 Comments:
It is a historical fact that the Biblical principles of modesty and chastity were upheld by this country's criminal code and judicial precedent from the day Columbus first set foot on American soil until the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Roth decision in 1957.
How is this historical fact when the "American soil" Columbus set foot on was 1) some 250+ years before the country you refer to even existed and had laws, and 2) nowhere near the North American continent which marks the boundaries of the United States?
Christopher, good point. But the people who came to what later became the United States all used some form of criminal code and judicial precedent and in every case the Biblical principles of modesty and chastity were upheld from the day Columbus first set foot on American soil until the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Roth decision in 1957.
But the people who came to what later became the United States all used some form of criminal code and judicial precedent and in every case the Biblical principles of modesty and chastity were upheld from the day Columbus first set foot on American soil until the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Roth decision in 1957.
All of them? Even the hundreds of thousands of black Africans who "came to what later became the United States"? Were their criminal codes based on Biblical principles of modesty and chastity? What about the millions of American Indians who were here before any Europeans arrived?
Listen, I take your general point (though I surely disagree on the implications you suggest). But it seems a little odd to me to play fast and loose with "historical facts" in a post on the particulars of historical situations and specifics of language.
Excellent summary, R.Gary. I agree completely - with the exception of the minor caveat already mentioned by Christopher.
However, I still draw an important distinction between pornography and immodesty. I see them as related and sometimes overlapping sub-sets of obscenity, with immodesty being the more common but pornography being the worse.
I'm fine with you disagreeing with that - and I'm sure we aren't going to change our minds.
Christopher, I was a vocational instructor at the Utah State Prison. During the five years I worked there, no inmates "came" to prison. They were all brought to prison in chains. Likewise the black African slaves. They didn't come here, they were brought here. And the American natives didn't come here either. They were already here. The colonies were settled by Christians who "came" here. And the roots of U.S. law are in the Bible.
For example, on October 8, 1875, in Indiana, a man named Henry Ardery was arrested for public indecency. A jury found him guilty. Mr. Ardery took his case to the State Supreme Court. He claimed that the statute was not specific enough because it did not name any body parts. Therefore, public indecency was not clearly defined by the statute and that meant it was not punishable.
The Indiana Supreme Court answered:
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"Immediately after the fall of Adam, there seems to have sprung up in his mind an idea that there was such a thing as decency and such a thing as indecency;... and, since that time, the ideas of decency and indecency have been instinctive in, and, indeed, parts of, humanity. And ... historically,... the first ... exercise of mechanical ingenuity was in the manufacture of fig-leaf aprons by Adam and Eve, by which to conceal from the public gaze of each other their ... private [part]s. This example ... has been imitated by all mankind since that time, except, perhaps, by some of the lowest grades of savages....
"The parts of the body which are charged, in this case, to have been exposed, are the parts referred to in the statute, the exposure of which is declared to be public indecency, but which decency forbids should be technically named in the statute." (56 Ind. 328.)
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Here is another example. On February 14, 1890, a Valley Falls, Kansas man was arrested for depositing in the U.S. Mail an obscene newspaper. The defendant was ... a peaceable, well-conducted citizen. He was a married man, living in wedlock and was about 60 years of age. He was convicted.
He appealed, partly on the grounds that he had acted unwittingly, not realizing that what he had mailed was obscene. To this claim the federal appeals court judge responded as follows:
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"There is in the popular conception and heart such a thing as modesty. It was born in the Garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge they ... `knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.' From that day to this civilized man has carried with him the sense of shame, — the feeling that there were some things on which the eye — the mind — should not look; and where men and women become so depraved ... that they will not veil their eyes, nor hold their tongues, the government should perform the office for them....
"The defendant ... cannot claim that he has acted unwittingly." (45 F.R. 415.)
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Let me say again that for centuries, there was no strictly legal definition of obscenity. It was simply against the law to offend modesty or chastity in public in any way and people were sent to jail for doing so.
Gary,
Good stuff!
Jack
Gary,
Actually, FWIW, dictionaries have not always just defined words according to common usage; there's a big prescriptivist/descriptive divide. (IIRC, Webster's was actually originally a prescriptive dictionary: it told what Webster felt words should mean, and spelled them as he thought they should be spelled.)
As to your point, I certainly have no reason to doubt that obscenity was criminally prosecuted until 1957, when the Supreme Court created a legal definition (of a sort) for obscenity. But I don't see why that matters--schools were segregated until Brown v. Board of Education, prisoners were convicted without knowing they didn't have to speak to the police until Miranda. Heck, interracial married couples could be arrested until Loving. That something was historically prosecuted, even from the dawn of U.S. civilization as we know it, doesn't lend support to the idea that it is good or necessary to prosecute it.
Yes, obscenity is bad. But you have to define crimes, because what I consider obscene (even using your "offensive to morals and chastity"-type standard) may not be obscene to you. Which is why there's a broad standard that relates to the morals of the community, if I remember my Bar prep right,
Sam B., when you read Webster's 1828 definition of obscenity alongside Samual Johnson's 1755 definition of the same word, it becomes obvious that Webster's definition is prescriptive, i.e. "sanctioned or authorized by long-standing custom or usage" (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition, copyright 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.)
In a 1981 BYU Law Review article, Law Professor Robert E. Riggs explained that the United States Supreme Court in 1957 "adopted a definition of obscenity far less restrictive than the test then being applied in many jurisdictions throughout the country." The effect of the Court's decision was, he states, "to open the legal floodgates to a great wave of sexually oriented expression [and] stimulate the production and distribution of sexually oriented material."
In support of this he points to a post-1957 change in obscenity's explicitness. He quotes the authors of a technical report prepared in August 1970 for the U.S. President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography:
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"The 1960s witness[ed] 'a shift of such major proportions that the degree of explicitness at the frontier in 1960 is now found in mass media widely distributed to the general buying public. During this period, the most explicit materials available on the market became more and more graphic. By August 1970, the most explicit materials available "above the counter" were approximately equivalent to the most explicit materials ever produced [prior to 1960]."
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It is not coincidental that during the late 1950s, Church leaders began condemning an increase of pornographic material in our society. Today, more than 50 years later, because of the tremendous shift in standards that has occurred, most (if not all) of the material to which they then referred would not even come close to being legally obscene. Yet the witness of those Church leaders was and is just and true.
The fact that our ancestors got some things wrong doesn't mean they didn't get some things right. The Biblical principles of modesty and chastity have not been repealed by God, only by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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