In dismissing the obscenity complaint filed against two Cebuano tabloids, acting Cebu City Prosecutor Ferdinand Collantes cited the landmark ruling of the United States Supreme Court in\u00a0 Miller vs. California.<\/p>\n
He\u00a0 cited the Miller test, which defines if a publication is pornographic or not based on three grounds: One, whether an \u201caverage person applying contemporary standards would find if the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second is whether the work describes in a \u201cpatently offensive way\u201d sexual conduct defined by law and third, if it lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.<\/p>\n
These elements of obscenity, Collantes argued, were not present in the two columns published in Cebuano tabloids Sun.Star SuperBalita and Banat 黑料社 and thus the complaints filed by the Cebu City Anti-Indecency Board (CCAIB) don’t hold water.<\/p>\n
Board members naturally didn’t agree.<\/p>\n
One of them, a fellow prosecutor, dared ask\u00a0 Collantes if he would allow his kids to read the risque\u00a0 columns.<\/p>\n
We could only speculate how\u00a0 Collantes would answer\u00a0 that.<\/p>\n
Being\u00a0 a responsible parent, he certainly wouldn’t allow his kids to read material\u00a0 that stirs sexual fantasies.<\/p>\n
Collantes ruled in favor of a more liberal appreciation of the naughty columns of \u201cFrom Junquera with Love\u201d and \u201cWildflower.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went with the argument that vulgarity, like beauty, is in the eye of the reader.<\/p>\n
His decision, we\u2019re sure, will not encourage the publications to rub it in by\u00a0 increasing the heat of the\u00a0 fiction series.<\/p>\n
As members of the Cebu community, the writers, editors\u00a0 and owners of SuperBalita and Banat, want respect, not just high circulation.<\/p>\n
This round was won by the Cebuano tabloids, which have other content in their pages worth praising.<\/p>\n
But if they cross the line with impunity, they both know that the pesky CCAIB is there waiting for another chance to pounce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In dismissing the obscenity complaint filed against two Cebuano tabloids, acting Cebu City Prosecutor Ferdinand Collantes cited the landmark ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Miller vs. California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1236,1227],"tags":[213,15853,29337,8689],"byline":[],"source":[206068],"column":[1264],"editor":[],"videographer":[],"position":[],"class_list":["post-102309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cdn-opinion","category-cdn","tag-media","tag-pornographic","tag-publications","tag-tabloids","source-cebu-daily-news","column-editorial"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n