Greg writes:
"Perry E. Metzger" <uunet!lehman.com!pmetzger> writes:
I'll remind you that the supreme court has held that text-only works can not be held to be obscene. You can write anything you want, including explicit descriptions of sodomizing dead children, and it can not be censored.
As I mentioned to Perry in E-mail, the above is incorrect. Pure text can be obscene and hence unprotected by the First Amendment. Kaplan v. California, 413 U.S. 115, 118-119, 93 S.Ct. 2680, 2683-2684 (1973). Others here (Mike Godwin?) can likely provide a much better discussion of just where this fits into First Amendment law; Shepherds' reveals no more recent decisions which modify the holding in Kaplan.
Greg is right. (Sorry, Perry.) As a practical matter, there are almost no obscenity prosecutions for words these days, but technically it's possible that words can be obscene. Ask 2 Live Crew. --Mike