May Massachusetts law bar racially offensive displays in bars?

[Gene Summerlin]

At 05:55 PM 3/15/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>If the First Amendment protects speech like this,  it must also protect
>more familiar forms of obscenity.  For surely, racially offensive displays
>appeal to an  unhealthy passion, threaten to aggravate an especially
>serious social harm, and often if not always transgress accepted community
>norms.  Nor do they, as a class, have a redeeming social value that sexual
>displays do not.  So it seems that the law is valid on its face and the
>facts present a legitimate jury question--unless sexual expression is
>constitutionally unique.  But how could it be?


Because obscenity is limited to *sexual* speech.  Racist speech, though
wrongheaded, is not obscene.

Gene"the 1st amendment protects the stupid" Summerlin





Gene Summerlin
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