ABSTRACT
Pornographic or sexually explicit material loses its First Amendment protection when it crosses a line separating ordinary pornography from the porno- graphically obscene, or what the courts at times, and often interchangeably, label "hard-core pornography." The word "pornography" comes from the Greek words for "prostitute" and "to write", and until the nineteenth century it referred to a description of prostitutes and prostitution as related to public hygiene. Although pornography is a very elusive legal term and is inextricably related to the more familiar yet equally indistinct term "obscenity," its delineation elucidates the general parameters of the pornographic-obscenity syndrome. The Supreme Court has created other categories of pornography that, like hard-core pornography, are not protected by the First Amendment. In Ginsberg v. New York, 390 US 629, the Court held that providing a more restricted First Amendment right for expression that would reach minor children was constitutionally permissible.
