Beyond obscenity A century after ‘Ulysses’, revisit the civil liberties argument
aeon.co
aeon.co
"The Comstock Act also gave the law’s author, Anthony Comstock, enormous authority. Already the executive secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (a private organization financed by the city’s elite), the federal law enabled him to search the mails, secure arrests and convictions, and destroy material seized from the mails. "
"In the past several years, the US has witnessed a rash of censorship laws and book bans, a political backlash designed to turn back the clock with regard to human sexual freedom, knowledge about race and racism, and women’s reproductive rights. Not surprisingly, conservatives are invoking the availability of the 19th-century ‘Comstock’ obscenity laws – never fully repealed – to prohibit the interstate distribution of the drug mifepristone (part of the so-called ‘abortion pill’)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Society_for_the_Suppr...