Court’s back
Now that most people in the northern climes are putting away their pool floats for the season, the U.S. Supreme Court is back in action.
On the docket this term is the use of foul language on television.
When Cher appeared on the Billboard Music Awards in 2002, she used a four-letter word connoting sex. The next year, on the same show, banter between Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie included that word and another obscenity. In Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, No. 07-582, the court will decide whether the F.C.C. has the power to punish broadcasters for airing “fleeting expletives.”
I wonder if the court will just decide to do away with the big ban on all obscene words. I mean, I hear some questionable stuff on primetime television now. Words I never heard on t.v. when I was young. Times they are a’changin’ and I wonder if the Roberts court will keep up.
Also on the docket is a case that will decide if the 7 Principles of Summum will be allowed to be erected as a monument beside the Ten Commandments.
The Ten Commandments monument, donated by a private group, is in Pleasant Grove, Utah. The city has rejected a similar gift from followers of Summum, who want to erect a monument devoted to the “Seven Aphorisms” of their faith. More a case about free speech than religion, Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, No. 07-665, will turn on whether the Ten Commandments monument is speech by the government or the monument’s donors, and on whether parks are public forums.
Usually I see anti-religious arguments against the Ten Commandments. This is the first time, that I can recall, that I’ve seen a pro-religious argument not only for them but for another religious text. I wonder if the citizens of Utah will be completely spiteful and simply tear down their monument so they won’t have to put up the other.
This could be an interesting Supreme Court session.
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