On This Day in History: March 3

The Comstock Laws

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These days you can get stuff in the mail showing images even gynecologists haven’t seen. And toys too. I just searched “sex toys” on Amazon and wow they got a lotta stuff, in case you were in the market for some “Adjustable Nipple Clamps with Chain.” Anyway, used to be that mailing that shit was illegal.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: March 3, 1873--

They were called Comstock Laws, and the first one was passed on March 3, 1873. It was the Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use. If ya want your best friend to see the nudie mag you stole from your older brother, best walk it over to his place rather than put it in the mail. If you used the U.S. Postal Service, it was a criminal act. Actually, under the act, even mere possession of such “lascivious” material was a misdemeanor.

It went beyond imagery and toys. You couldn’t mail anything defined as “obscenity,” which considering the prevailing morality of the day was probably pretty fucking puritanical in its restrictions. You couldn’t even mail a racy love letter to someone. Also, nothing that could prevent someone from getting pregnant, as well as nothing that could end a pregnancy (called an “abortifacient”).

The law came about because the totally-fun-at-parties Anthony Comstock, who was the head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, said society was going to hell. He appeared before Congress and showed them all sorts of sexual imagery and the politicians ignored their throbbing erections and said oh yeah that stuff is bad we need to ban it. Continues below …

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Then the arrests began. One such victim was equal rights advocate Ezra Heywood, who wrote that women should have control over their own bodies. Comstock, who Congress made a special agent for enforcing the law, considered such writings obscene and arrested Heywood, who was sentenced to two years hard labor.

States implemented their own versions of the Comstock Laws with varying degrees of harshness. Connecticut, the state Comstock was born in, was the most restrictive of all. And while many uptight motherfuckers supported the laws, a lot of other people thought they were bullshit. In 1878 a petition for their repeal was signed by 50,000 people and delivered to Congress but was ignored. Early birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, who was also a eugenicist, was arrested in 1915 for mailing information about contraception. She was convicted, but it was overturned on appeal on the grounds that contraceptive devices could be used to prevent disease. The laws spawned some creative advertising efforts to get around prosecution. It would be another 18 years before things like condoms could be advertised as a method of birth control. Speaking of condoms, as a testament to how fucking prudish Americans could be, the U.S. military was the only one of the Allied forces to send its soldiers into World War I without supplying them with condoms.

Over the decades, various aspects of the Comstock Laws have been repealed or reshaped, but they still hold much influence over American society.

Thanks, Amy, for the suggestion of today’s topic.

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