One mans obscenity is another mans bedtime reading. (Geoffrey Essay

One mans obscenity is another mans bedtime reading. (Geoffrey RobertsonConsider whether the UK law of obscenity should be abolished or reformed in relation to literature or film - Essay Example may â€Å"tend to deprave or corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all the relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it.† This definition has been derived from the case of R v Hicklin2 where the Plaintiff Henry Scott was charged for publishing an offensive, anti-Catholic booklet. The decision of the trial Court finding Hicklin guilty was reversed by the higher Court who upheld Hicklin’s argument that the intent behind the publication of the booklet was not to corrupt and deprave. This decision was however reversed by the Queen’s Bench which held that the intention was immaterial if the matter was obscene. This case set a precedent wherein selected passages from a work could be examined out of context to determine obscenity and if found, the entire work could be removed from public consumption. This standard of obscenity has since been revised in subsequent cases. Two of these important cases are Roth v United States3, in which Mary Dennett, a birth control activist was held accountable in the same manner as Scott was in the Hicklin case, of publishing a booklet that was deemed to be obscene. The Supreme Court however did not find the work to fulfil the criteria of â€Å"depraving and corrupting† the reader of the material, because it essentially constituted sex education which was presented in an acceptable way. Thus, this case established that when an obscene passage is viewed in the context of the entire work which on the whole was presented decently, it would not be classified as obscene. The Court also raised the important issue of protection of the First amendment rights to freedom of speech guaranteed under the United States Constitution, which would have been violated if a decision had been made to ban the work purely on the basis of some passages that some readers found obscene. This case has thus raised two important issues that rose in opposition to the argument in support of a finding of