Amend Article 3 of Chapter 12 of Title 16.  A person commits the offense of distributing obscene material when he or she sells lends, rents, leases, gives, advertises, publishes, exhibits, or otherwise disseminates to any person any obscene material of any description, knowing the obscene nature thereof, or offers to do so, or possesses such material with intent to do so.  Material is obscene if to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, taken as a whole, it predominantly appeals to the prurient interest, that is, a shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion; the material as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value; and the material depicts, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct.  It is an affirmative defense that selling, lending, renting, leasing, giving, advertising, publishing, exhibition, or otherwise disseminating the material was restricted to a person associated with an institution of higher learning including persons associated with public libraries or school libraries or a person whose receipt of such material was authorized in writing by a licensed medical practitioner or psychiatrist.  A person who commits the offense of distributing obscene material shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature.