Reasoning? Since when does a series of disconnected assertions constitute "reasoning"?
I guess it depends on what the definition of "reasoning" is....
The 14th amendment was never ratified properly
Ya fergot yer hat.
You are mistaken however.
First of all pornography was not considered a protected right under the 1st Amendment. Every State had laws against obscenity, and they were enforced.
Sharpless was not charged just because he was selling the viewing of his picture, but because he was destroying the moral fabric of society.
This court is...invested with power to punish not only open violations of decency and morality, but also whatever secretly tends to undermine the principles of society...
Whatever tends to the destruction of morality, in general, may be punishable criminally. Crimes are public offenses, not because they are perpetrated publically, but because their effect is to injure the public. Buglary, though done in secret, is a public offense; and secretly destroying fences is indictable.
Hence it follows, that an offense may be punishable, if in it's nature and by it's example, it tends to the corruption or morals; although it not be committed in public.
If the privacy of the room was a protection, all the youth of a city might be corrupted, by taking them, one by one, into a chamber, and there inflaming their passions by the exhibition of lascivious pictures. In the eye of the law, this would be a publication, and a most pernicious one.
Although every immoral act, such as lying, ect... is not indictable, yet where the offense charged is destructive of morality in general...it is punishable at common law. The destruction of morality renders the power of government invalid...
The Corruption of the public mind, in general, and debauching the manners of youth, in particular, by lewd and obscene pictures exhibited to view, must necessarily be attended with the most Injurious consequences...
No man is permitted to corrupt the morals of the people, secret poision cannot be thus desseminated.
As you can see by the reasoning the court used, they were opposed (just as the laws of the time) to immoral acts that destroyed society.
As for your 14th Amendment argument.
The 14th amendment was never ratified properly, and to top it all off, I find it amusing that libertarians who claim to be champions of the constitution, would support the 14th amendment, especially since it is the source of federalism and federal power, and since it was NEVER Ratified Constitutionally.
Follow this link The invalid 14th Amendment
Reasoning? Since when does a series of disconnected assertions constitute "reasoning"?
I guess it depends on what the definition of "reasoning" is....
The 14th amendment was never ratified properly
Ya fergot yer hat.
Your very inconsistency demonstrates the wrongness of your position. Pornography is not and was not an exception to the First Amendment - obscenity is and was an exception to First Amendment protection. Sharpless was convicted of obscenity, not possession of pornography. You may be of the opinion that there is no difference, and that pornography is obscenity by definition. However, neither the law nor public opinion support you in that position.
The 14th amendment was never ratified properly, and to top it all off, I find it amusing that libertarians who claim to be champions of the constitution, would support the 14th amendment, especially since it is the source of federalism and federal power, and since it was NEVER Ratified Constitutionally.
What makes you think I am a libertarian? Or is this simply an attempt at ad hominem abuse?
Nevertheless, you are trying to make a normative argument about how you think the Constitution should be, in the face of well-settled law. You may argue that the 14'th Amendment is invalid as much or as little as you like, but as far as the law is concerned, this issue is settled.
If anything, the libertarians in the audience today will almost certainly object to my characterization of the 14'th, just as you claim to, which ought to suffice to dispel this notion that I am somehow a libertarian myself.