Just a small portion of an essay I'm working on. Thought I'd share it.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

This is the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and one of the most radically debated topics in the history of our country. The right of U.S. citizens to express themselves freely has been controversial danger to our society, while simultaneously the stifling of expression has often reflected the divisive and harmful nature of human beings when it comes to personal beliefs. To say that a single brush can be used to paint every decision regarding freedom of expression would be an egregious error of human judgment; at the very least. This innate nature of expression has and will continue to stir controversy at the highest judicial level. Indeed the First Amendment has seemed to have affected nearly every fringe of societal development in the United States.

One of the most recent topics of First Ammendment controversy came along in 1999 with the advent of pornography into cable television. Section 505 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 required cable television operators providing channels “primarily dedicated to sexually oriented programming” either to “full scramble or otherwise fully block” those channels or to limit their transmission to hours when children are unlikely to be viewing (between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.) In the case of United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group Inc. the plaintiff asserted that the specifically regulated time slots for adult entertainment was in violation of the First Amendment. The court ruled in favor of Playboy, stating that there lied less restrictive ways to regulate the content cable television in section 504 of the '96 Telecommunications Act. 504 requires a cable operator “upon request of a cable service provider...without charge to full scramble or fully block” any channel the subscriber does not wish to receive.

It is widely understood that the ruling was intended to enable parents to protect their children from harmful viewing material such as The Playboy Channel. It is indicative however of the controversy of that usually accompanies First Amendment court cases. Most adults would find the content of Playboy T.V. highly offensive and the invasion of pornography into their homes was an immensely controversial issue, however Playboy's content had First Amendment protection. As Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy put it: “The constitution exists precisely so that opinions and judgments, including aesthetic and moral judgments about art and literature, can be formed, tested, and expressed. What the Constitution says is that these judgments are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority. Technology expands the capacity to choose; and it denies the potential of this revolution if we assume the Government is best positioned to make these choices for us.”