Is watching scat porn legal in the US?

October 17, 2015 1:28 AM

If it is legal, is there any variance from one state to another?

I have a friend with sexual desire which is focused on scat porn. As with many people whose sexual desires fall outside the bounds of vanilla sex, my friend is hugely ashamed of this. Also, they are terrified that it is illegal to watch scat porn.

My off the cuff take on it is that scat porn is probably legal, that if it is consensual and doesn't involve minors that it is in the clear. But I don't know this to be absolutely true. And I know that people here at MetaFilter will know.

Is watching scat porn legal in the US? If it is legal, is there a variance from one state to another?

posted by anonymous to Law & Government (3 answers total)

Wikipedia has a page on United States obscenity law. It claims,

...federal obscenity law in the U.S. is highly unusual in that not only is there no uniform national standard, but rather, there is an explicit legal precedent (the "Miller test", below) that all but guarantees that something that is legally obscene in one jurisdiction may not be in another. In effect, the First Amendment protections of free speech vary by location within the U.S., and over time... Even at the federal level, there does not exist a specific listing of which exact acts are to be classified as obscene outside of the legally determined court cases.

This isn't too long after comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested for simply swearing on stage (1961-1964) but that page also claims,

In 1969, the Supreme Court held in Stanley v. Georgia that State laws making mere private possession of obscene material a crime are invalid, at least in the absence of an intention to sell, expose or circulate the material.

...but the article on the decision itself mentions that at the very least this doesn't apply to possession of child pornography.
posted by XMLicious at 3:33 AM on October 17, 2015

The only types of pornography that are clearly illegal in the United States across the board, as far as I'm aware, would be child porn or bestially. There may be laws on the books in some jurisdictions that would apply, but I'm not aware of any concerted effort to prosecute scat porn.

It's possible that a prosecutor could go after other categories, but I think it'd be a rough case to make against anything produced only with consenting adults.
posted by jzb at 5:01 AM on October 17, 2015

Under the Bush administration, at least one headline case against "obscene" materials was prosecuted (and apparently won) against Danilo Simoes Croce [See: Foreign Operator of Obscene Web Sites Pleads Guilty of Obscenity Charges and Foreign Operator of Obscene Web Sites Arrested on Federal Obscenity Charges]. They went after Croce for videos with "bukkake, fisting, and depictions of defecation, urination, and vomiting in conjunction with sex acts."

Croce was the producer who created "2 Girls, 1 Cup" -- which suggests that the popularity/mainstream awareness of the particular video had a lot to do with the prosecution, rather than a specific crackdown on scat porn. Note that also seems to follow a 2004 "pornography crackdown" by the Bush administration. (Remember, they're the knuckleheads that also put Chong in jail for selling bongs, so...)

Also good reading, on the Volokh Conspiracy from 2012 about a plank in the GOP platform about "Current Laws on All Forms of Pornography and Obscenity Need to Be Vigorously Enforced."

I'm not a lawyer, and certainly not your friend's lawyer, but here's what I would tell them -- evidence of prosecution of possession of "scat porn" in today's society is passingly rare, and barring a major sea change in priorities, they are unlikely to be targeted just for watching scat porn. It's slightly more likely they could be charged if they were producing some form of porn, but just watching it? Not so much.

If your friend has really pissed off the government/local prosecutor, it's possible they could throw some charges against your friend if they were found in possession of scat porn -- but U.S. law seems to be such that if you are in that position, the government is going to be able to find something to charge you with regardless.
posted by jzb at 6:33 AM on October 17, 2015 [1 favorite]