Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 908

529US3

Unit: $U60

[09-26-01 12:39:04] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 803 (2000)

833

Scalia, J., dissenting

might not hold itself forth as primarily dedicated to sex—in
which case its productions which contain “serious literary,
artistic, political, or scientiﬁc value” (if any) would be as enti-
tled to First Amendment protection as the statuary rooms of
the National Gallery. But in the competitive world of cable
programming, the possibility that a channel devoted to sex
would not advertise itself as such is sufﬁciently remote, and
the number of such channels sufﬁciently small (if not indeed
nonexistent), as not to render the provision substantially
overbroad.2

Playboy itself illustrates the type of business § 505 is de-
signed to reach. Playboy provides, through its networks—
Playboy Television, AdulTVision, Adam & Eve, and Spice—

2 Justice Stevens misapprehends in several respects the nature of the
test I would apply. First, he mistakenly believes that the nature of the
advertising controls the obscenity analysis, regardless of the nature of the
material being advertised.
I entirely agree with him that “advertising a
bareheaded dancer as ‘topless’ might be deceptive, but it would not make
her performance obscene.” Ante, at 828–829 (concurring opinion).
I be-
lieve, however, that if the material is “patently offensive” and it is being
advertised as such, we have little reason to think it is being proffered for
its socially redeeming value.

Justice Stevens’s second misapprehension ﬂows from the ﬁrst: He
sees the test I would apply as incompatible with the Court’s commercial-
speech jurisprudence. See ante, at 829 (concurring opinion); see also
Splawn v. California, 431 U. S. 595, 603, n. 2 (1977) (Stevens, J., dissent-
ing) (“Ginzburg cannot survive [Virginia Bd. of Pharmacy v. Virginia
Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U. S. 748 (1976)]”). There is no
such conﬂict. Although the Ginzburg test, like most obscenity tests, has
ordinarily been applied in a commercial context (most purveyors of obscen-
ity are in the business for the money), its logic is not restricted to that
context. The test applies equally to the improbable case in which a collec-
tor of indecent materials wishes to give them away, and takes out a classi-
ﬁed ad in the local newspaper touting their salacious appeal. Commercial
motive or not, the “ ‘[c]ircumstances of . . . dissemination are relevant to
determining whether [the] social importance claimed for [the] material
[is] . . . pretense or reality.’ ” Splawn, supra, at 598 (quoting jury instruc-
tion approved). Perhaps this is why the Court in Splawn did not accept
Justice Stevens’s claim of incompatibility.