The Ames City Council has decided not to appeal the Iowa Supreme Court decision that decided control over obscene material should remain under state control, rather than being regulated by individual city governments.

No matter the reason why they chose not to appeal, the correct decision was made. Iowa has upheld stripping as an art form on two separate occasions in 1998 and 2008. The state has also consistently reserved the decision making process regarding obscene material.

Allowing Ames to decide its own city laws regarding the handling and legality of any material deemed “obscene” sets a precedent for the self-regulation of all Iowa cities or counties and therefore could lead to an unnecessary amount of new laws springing up around the already sensitive issue of obscene material.

The current standards for obscene material law in the United States were established by the Supreme Court in Miller vs. California (1973), which established a three part test for the determining obscenity.

To briefly describe the three tests: an “average person” in the community must find the work to appeal to “prurient interests,” the work describes sexual conduct in an offensive manner, as defined by the applicable state law and finally the work must lack any serious literary, artistic, scientific, political or scientific value.

As it can be clearly seen, there is a fairly large amount of grey area within the law. For example, how do you determine the “average person” in a community? Would that person have to be of the majority race or religion of the community, and would their opinion truly be reflective of the individual beliefs of the whole community?

Due to these vague guidelines of the determining factors for obscenity, even state regulation can be considered a contentious issue. Allowing a governing body to determine obscene material for entire states is a problem in of itself, but spreading that ability to hundreds of local governments statewide presents further issues.

The issue with extending the right to create obscenity laws at the local level goes far beyond strip clubs. Both state and local governments regularly attempt to have books banned from public libraries and schools all across the nation.

These attempts are often unsuccessful or remain limited to extremely small areas, but granting obscenity power determination could certainly lead to increased success in book banning, a far more pressing issue than whether or not you can touch a stripper.

The idea that a community can make something go away if it does not align with its moral standards is explicitly unconstitutional. If any government body must decide what is appropriate for the public, then having vague and unenforceable laws serves freedom of choice and therefore should remain with the state government.