Forwarded to me as part of a TMF legal consult.
"Pornography" is a layperson's term, with no particular legal significance. One perosn may believe that Playboy is non-pornographic, while another believes that it is. Neither is incorrect.
The term of legal significance is "obscenity", which, after many years of debate and through many cases, the U.S. Supreme Court defined in Miller v. California in 1973. It is a three-part test, as follows:
"The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be:
(a) whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards" would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, Kois v. Wisconsin, supra, at 230, quoting Roth v. United States, supra, at 489;
(b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and
(c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."
Note that part (a) does employ community standards. However, all three parts must be met for a work to be deemed obscene, and part (c), as the Court has held elsewhere, is a national threshold, not a community test.
So the TMF may be pornographic to some. Not to others.
And we have never been judged Obscene.
Myriads
In regards to your other question, since most people in my personal life know of my many fetishes (oh, there are so many), the question is irrelevant. However, I don't direct people I do business with here as I keep this aspect secret (as many folks do with their significant other). My reasons are purely monetary. I like writing scifi books and comics and would like some of my work to end up on TV or in theatres. I would probably lose lucrative contracts and business ties if I broadcast my interests.
