804
Opinion of Kennedy, J.
tions medium. Turner Broadcasting, 512 U. S., at 637-641. There is even less cause for a lower standard here.
Pacifica did identify two important considerations relevant to the broadcast of objectionable material. First, indecent broadcasting "confronts the citizen, not only in public, but also in the privacy of the home, where the individual's right to be left alone plainly outweighs the First Amendment rights of an intruder." 438 U. S., at 748. Second, "broadcasting is uniquely accessible to children, even those too young to read." Id., at 749. Pacifica teaches that access channels, even if analogous to ordinary public fora from the standpoint of the programmer, must also be considered from the standpoint of the viewer. An access channel is not a forum confined to a discrete public space; it can bring indecent expression into the home of every cable subscriber, where children spend astounding amounts of time watching television, cf. ante, at 744-745 (citing studies). Though in Cohen we explained that people in public areas may have to avert their eyes from messages that offend them, 403 U. S., at 21, we further acknowledged that "government may properly act in many situations to prohibit intrusion into the privacy of the home of unwelcome views and ideas which cannot be totally banned from the public dialogue," ibid. See Hess v. Indiana, 414 U. S. 105, 108 (1973) (per curiam); Rowan v. Post Office Dept., 397 U. S. 728, 736-738 (1970). This is more true when the interests of children are at stake. See id., at 738 ("[T]he householder [should not] have to risk that offensive material come into the hands of his children before it can be stopped").
These concerns are weighty and will be relevant to whether the law passes strict scrutiny. They do not justify, however, a blanket rule of lesser protection for indecent speech. Other than the few categories of expression that can be proscribed, see R. A. V., 505 U. S., at 382-390, we have been reluctant to mark off new categories of speech for diminished constitutional protection. Our hesitancy reflects
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