Heard on my iTunes, a January 2000 Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! show with a quiz about a law under consideration in the Mississippi state senate (aimed against lap-dancing) barring “the showing of covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state”. Much merriment from the panelists at “discernibly turgid” (as a way of getting around a reference to an erection or a hard-on, or in fact to penises).
It turns out that “discernibly turgid” is something of a term of art in law-making about such things. So we find on an Oklahoma site from 2/1/06 a discussion of “state of nudity” in Oklahoma Statute 21-1040 that includes a reference to “depiction of covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state”.
And from a Cornell law site, this excerpt from a Supreme Court opinion:
BRENNAN, J., Dissenting Opinion
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
495 U.S. 103
Osborne v. Ohio
APPEAL FROM THE SUPREME COURT OF OHIO
No. 88-5986 Argued: Dec. 5, 1989 — Decided: April 18, 1990
Another section defines “nudity” as
the showing, representation, or depiction of human male or female genitals, pubic area, or buttocks with less than a full, opaque covering, or of a female breast with less than a full opaque covering of any portion thereof [p127] below the top of the nipple, or of covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state.
Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2907.01(H) (Supp.1989).
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