Sex education is still a controversial subject today in many parts of the world, Even in supposedly liberal societies, the amount of information provided to children on sexual development and birth control can spark protests by conservative groups worrying about "corrupting children". If topics such as sexuality can trigger protests today, you can imagine the difficulties experts lecturing on public health faced back in the 19th century.
Take early health advocate Sylvester Graham, for instance. Though he primarily spoke on the importance of chastity and the evils of masturbation, among other things, his public lectures still drove mobs to protest and verbally abuse the women who dared to attend them. At one Boston lecture on February 26, 1835, a witness described seeing one thousand mobbers confronting Graham "for lecturing to the Ladies alone and not even their husbands admitted!!" Though the women who attended defended themselves as best they could, men protested Graham's frank talk on chastity as an attempted infringement on their marital rights as husbands.
The fact that Graham insisted on segregating his lectures by gender made them even more suspicious since they were unable to hear what he was telling women. Still, enough information leaked out to spark outrage. Instructing women to limit sexual contact and deny men the unlimited access they had taken for granted was upsetting enough. That some women even went so far as to ask advice on birth control during the women-only lectures infuriated them. While the "rhythm method" is favoured by conservatives today, recommending it to women during the 19th century bordered on obscenity.
And the controversy was only just beginning.
Marriage Manuals and Free Love
Along with public lectures on sexual health, "marriage manuals" became bestsellers despite attempts at controlling the information they contained. Since some of these books also included information on birth control, the subject was often explosive, especially since the "Free Love" movement was also gaining traction during the middle years of the 19th century. A major theme in anarchist literature, Free Love often meant a total rejection of traditional values such as marriage and chastity. More commonly seen in Europe, Free Love also had its share of American supporters.
It was one particular supporters, Robert Dale Owen, who wrote the first American pamphlet on contraception in 1831. The son of prominent social reformer, Robert Owen, Robert Dale Owen embraced his father's views on social democracy. For him, giving women advice on how to control their fertility was part of that vision. His pamphlet, Moral Physiology; or, A Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population Question, contained frank talk about vaginal sponges and the value of coitus interruptus in preventing pregnancy. Shockingly for that time, Owen also argued that unmarried women should have access to birth control information as well. He was still a man of his time, though, and argued against birth control methods for prostitutes or in casual sex.
One of Owen's Free Love colleagues was even more controversial. Frances ("Fanny") Wright was a Scottish heiress and an ardent feminist who became an American citizen in 1825. Along with being a dedicated social reformer and abolitionist, she was also part of the American Popular Health Movement for promoting health care advice. For Wright, that meant providing women with information about how their bodies worked and controlling fertility. While much of her advice seems tame today, it certainly shocked "polite society"and many conservatives denounced Wright and the message that she tried to convey. Long after her death, "Fanny Wrightist" was a slur that later women had difficulty overcoming.
Even male freethinkers faced legal opposition due to the Free Love association. American physician Charles Knowlton generated a firestorm of controversy when he published a book titled The Fruits of Philosophy, or the Private Companion of Young Married People in 1830. Though the first edition of the book was only shown to Knowlton's patients in Ashfield, Massachusetts, it was the second edition of the book published in 1832 that would generate controversy due to its wider circulation. Along with being an all-purpose guide to sexuality (including advice on impotence and other sexual problems, the also described different birth control methods. Much as with Fanny Wright's message, Knowlton's insistence that women should be allowed to take charge of their own fertility was enough for him to be charged with obscenity.
The Conservatives Strike Back
A local minister, Mason Grosvenor, began a campaign against accused Knowlton of contributing to "infidelity and licentiousness". The resulting legal storm would lead to Charles Knowlton being sentenced to three months "hard labour" and a heavy fine. Not being satisfied with the light sentence Knowlton received, Grosvenor filed another complaint against the doctor in Franklin County. After two acquittals, the charges were dropped and Grosvenor left town. As for the book's publisher, Abner Kneeland, he would later be tried for blasphemy with Knowlton's book being part of the evidence against him.
Despite Knowlton's legal victory, the battle for public sex education was hardly over. Though his book enjoyed modest success in the years after Knowlton's death in 1850, other countries still regarded it as obscene. Which was part of the problem for governments that attempted to ban the book. The publication of Knowlton's book in the United Kingdom led to a high-profile trial in 1877 of the book's two publishers, Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant. The trial publicity turned Fruits of Philosophy into a best-seller (though the readers may have been disappointed that the book was not as obscene as the press led them to believe). Annie Besant would go on to publish her own birth control manual, along with becoming one of the guiding forces in the Theosophy movement.
The American Sex Wars
Back in the United States, things were just beginning to heat up. Dr. Frederick Hollick's public lectures on the "Origin of Life" in Philadelphia generated a new storm. Not only was he speaking openly and frankly on the topic of human sexuality to a mixed-gender audience, but he actually had a paper-mache model of a naked woman on stage to demonstrate some of his points. Not only was the model anatomically correct, but Hollick could systematically remove the outer layers as he lectured on the "generative act". He also described the importance of frequent sexual pleasure for all mature humans, men and women alike. Needless to say, this was enough to set off the conservatives who, much as they did with Knowlton, accused Frederick Hollick of immoral behaviour.
Not that this reduced the popularity of Hollick's lectures. Though newspaper editorials at the time reported on how "many have fainted away at first view of Hollick's manikins", he gave twenty-six lectures in Philadelphia alone over a five-year period. Joining the popular lecture circuit, Hollick also lectured in Baltimore, Washington, St. Louis, throughout Massachusetts and even on a steamship heading to New Orleans (the other passengers insisted).
In 1850, Hollick published his own "marriage manual", The Marriage Guide, or Natural History of Generation, which covered all the material he gave in his public lectures but more accessible for a wider audience. Along with graphic descriptions of sexual anatomy, complete with diagrams and pictures, Hollick also wrote about formerly taboo topics such as sexual ecstasy and autoeroticism. He also wrote another book, The Diseases of Woman, Their Causes and Cure Familiarly Explained: With Practical Hints For Their Prevention, And For The Preservation of Female Health in 1847.
Though both books established Hollick as a major authority on human sexuality and sexual health, he was also targeted by Philadelphia's district attorney who charged him with obscenity. The fact that Hollick was a freethinker and a supporter of Robert Owen likely worked against him as well. Not that Hollick was entirely enlightened considering that he was openly racist and supported slavery on the grounds of white superiority. As for his views on sexuality, he was ahead of his time in some ways and very much a man of his time in others. That included the evils of masturbation or self-abuse (which he argued caused baldness, epilepsy and impotence). Still, his emphasis on the right of women to control their fertility was part of the "first wave" of feminism that was already underway in many parts of the world.
Ultimately, the rising interest in public sex education would be basically placed on hold with the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War in 1861. The war years would transform American society more completely than anyone could have imagined.
The years following the end of the U.S. Civil War saw a rise in conservative values and newspaper editorials regularly called for measures to combat "immoral behaviour". While women were still expected to know their place as wives and mothers, a small but influential group of "loose women" still enjoyed many freedoms denied to "respectable women". That included having their own income, sex outside of marriage, and freedom to use birth control. Despite the conservatism, prostitution was a booming business and madams were often independently wealthy in their own right. Not only were brothels a common sight in virtually every American city but prostitutes even advertised their services in some newspapers.
In many cases, women had few other options but prostitution considering the subsistence wages in the rare places that would even consider hiring women. Even women who "married well" tended not to be wealthy in their own right since all their assets belonged to their husbands. Despite the social stigma surrounding the sex trade, there were always new prospects. And it was the prostitutes who provided the chief demand for contraceptives during the mid-19th century.
But the backlash was already setting in. While successful madams could run brothels that allowed them to enjoy luxurious lifestyles, newspaper editorials condemning them were already selling papers. In his 1869 book, The Women of New York: or Social Life in the Great City, journalist George Ellington wrote at length on madams and their influence. Describing them as "female fiends of the worst kind, who seem to have lost all the better qualities of nature", he also described madams as being the "friends and chosen companions of some of the wealthiest and most influential men of the city." Though the legal crackdown after the Civil War largely ended the quiet life that many sex trade workers enjoyed, their refusal to see themselves as "fallen women" offended the Victorian sensibilities of the time.
Along with suppressing the sex trade however, there was also a backlash against contraceptives. Religious figures denounced the sale of contraceptives in drugstores and books published in the 1860s and 1870 (with titles such as "Satan in Society") denounced birth control as a "violation of the laws of Heaven" and a "hydra-headed monster" that was meant to kill the American family.
The Comstock Era
When it came to preserving public morality though, nobody was more outspoken than Anthony Comstock. After fighting in the Civil War (where he was offended by the profane language used by his fellow soldiers), Comstock settled in New York City where he became involved with various Christian movements including the Young Men's Christian Association. In 1873, he founded the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice and he became a major force in the U.S. drive to stem the rising tide of "immoral conduct". In that same year, Comstock and his followers managed to pressure the U.S. government into passing new legislation to block the shipping of "obscene materials" though the mail. Though the official name of the new law was the "Act for The Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use, virtually everybody referred to it as the Comstock Act. 
Not only did the Act criminalize any obscene materials sent through the mail, but it also banned the possession of any materials deemed obscene, including contraceptives and abortifacients. The Act also extended to "marriage manuals" and any educational information relating to venereal disease. In fact, the Federal law made anyone selling or possessing these materials liable to a long prison sentence and a hefty fine. The Comstock Act was quickly followed by similar legislation in 24 states which are still known collectively as the Comstock Laws. While these laws were later challenged in court, the various decisions largely upheld the Constitutionality of the legislation. There was also the thorny question of what constituted obscenity which vexed judges well into the 20th century (and still does today).
More importantly, the Act appointed Comstock as a a special agent of the U.S. Postal Service (including the right to carry a gun) and gave him virtually absolute power in deciding what constituted obscenity. Comstock was also free to arrest anyone whom he considered guilty of promoting or distributing obscene materials. His definition of "lewd or obscene" was far broader than society had previously accepted and even medical textbooks featuring anatomically correct drawings were seized. Comstock also shut down the Louisiana lottery which he felt contributed to gambling and related immorality.
Anthony Comstock became a polarizing figure in U.S. society. While civil rights groups and sex trade workers condemned him, church groups considered him a hero. He was also mocked internationally and George Bernard Shaw coined the term "comstockery" after his play, Mrs. Warren's Profession, was deemed obscene under the Comstock Act. In writing about Comstock and his crusade, Shaw said that, "Comstockery is the world's standing joke at the expense of the United States. Europe likes to hear of such things. It confirms the deep-seated conviction of the Old World that America is a provincial place, a second-rate country-town civilization after all." Comstock, in turn, dismissed Shaw as an "Irish smut dealer".
But George Bernard Shaw got off lightly compared to many other social reformers pushing for public education on sexuality and birth control. Newspapers were banned from running advertisements for contraceptives and even news stories covering sexual topics could lead to newspapers being charged under the Comstock laws. Comstock's wrath also fell on prominent suffragettes Victoria Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Celeste Claflin for their support of feminist issues such as legalized prostitution. He even went so far as to arrest them for running an expose of a prominent preacher's adulterous affair (they were later acquitted).
Comstock's crusade meant an end to the sale and dissemination of contraceptives, marriage manuals, erotica, and other "obscene materials". At least, these things could no longer be openly sold. An underground black market continued to flourish for the sex trade workers and free thinkers determined to preserve the sexual freedom they had years before. While they were harshly prosecuted whenever Comstock could get an opportunity, the marketeers he denounced as "moral cancer planters" and "old she-villains" continued to make contraceptives available. Considering millions of women were demanding condoms and other forms of protection, the bootleg trade was every bit as competitive and cut-throat as what the rumrunners were up to during the Prohibition era.
Brooklyn entrepreneur, Joseph Bachrach, sold a wide range of contraceptives and other "erotic aids" which he manufactured himself in the home he shared with his wife and seven children. His inventory included condoms, vaginal shields, and "rubber ticklers" for sexual stimulation. By the 1880s, Backrach's secret factory was turning out thousands of contraceptives to be snapped up by his eager customers. And Backrach was hardly the only one. Julius Schmid, creator of the Fourex, Sheik and Rameses condoms, was inspired to develop his products while working in a sausage factory. When Comstock's vice squad raided Schmid's factory at his 46th Street home (then the heart of New York's red light district), they found 696 prophylactic "skins" and "one form for manufacturing same". Though Schmid was jailed and fined, that hardly stopped him from keeping up with the demand for his product. As the first American to mass produce rubber condoms, Schmid eventually cornered the market and went on to become the main source of condoms sold to U.S. soldiers during World War I.
One of the saddest stories associated with Comstock's crusade involved suffragette and sexual pioneer Ida Craddock whose fight for open discussion of sex and birth control, and her battle with Anthony Comstock led to her suicide. Born in 1857, her father died when she was only four months old and she was raised by her puritanical mother. Despite this stern upbringing, Ida Craddock became a freethinker relatively early in her life. After being blocked from entering the University of Pennsylvania as its first female undergraduate, she went on to teach stenography to women students at Giraud College in Philadelphia. She also joined the National Liberal League and was part of the Free Thought movement. 
By the time she was 30, Craddock developed a strong interest in Theosophy and the occult which took her in a rather unusual direction. Along with trying to combine religious and mystical writings from around the world into a single discipline, she began lecturing on sexuality. Her topics focused on religion and sexuality with titles such as "Survivals of Sex Worship in Christianity and in Paganism" and "What Christianity Has Done For the Marital Relation". Since the first English translation of the Kama Sutra had become widely available by 1843, the book developed a strong, if discreet, following throughout the Western world despite it being regarded as obscene by many moral crusaders, including Anthony Comstock. For Ida Craddock however, the book was a revelation and she eventually declared herself to be a Priestess and Pastor of the Church of Yoga.
Considering she was an unmarried woman living in the last part of the 19th century, becoming a student of various forms of eroticism was a shocking development (it certainly shocked her mother). While became romantically involved with two men during this time in her life (thus putting theory into practise), she never married. Despite the best efforts of Anthony Comstock and his moral league, the Free Love movement was still encouraging greater openness about sexuality and Ida Craddock became one of the movement's leaders. Along with becoming a sex therapist in Chicago, she also wrote a series of books and pamphlets that would establish her as an authority on religion and sexuality. Two of her books, "Lunar and Sex Worship" and "Sex Worship (Continued)" reflected her radical ideas about religion and sexuality. This included her suggestion that the cross is a symbol of sexual union and the sex instinct was the underlying principle of all religion.
Ida Craddock's most controversial book, "Heavenly Bridegrooms" was first published in 1894. In the book, she openly admitted to being sexually active despite having no husband. In her case however, there was no scandal since she actually was married - to an angel named "Soph". Not only did "Soph" visit her nightly, but their sexual relations provided her with divinely-inspired enlightenment. In her book, Craddock stated that sex with her "husband" was often so noisy that the neighbours complained! She expanded on the ideas in her book in a later paper titled "Psychic Wedlock" about the spiritual justification of her angelic marriage. As she pointed out, the Virgin Mary had herself been impregnated by a heavenly bridegroom.
Though her mother tried to have Ida Craddock committed at one point, there is no real evidence that she was mentally ill. From today's perspective, her writing about an angelic husband may have either been pure delusion or a clever way for an unmarried woman to explain her sexual experience without being regarded as promiscuous. Whatever the explanation, Heavenly Bridegrooms was largely overlooked during Ida Craddock's lifetime and may helped explain why she has been so completely forgotten as a sexual and feminist pioneer. When she is remembered at all, it is for her numerous pamphlets and marriage manuals on sex education and birth control, which predated Margaret Sanger by decades.
Her pamphlets must have seemed radical enough though. Along with endorsing birth control and more sexual freedom for women, she also argued that husbands who forced themselves on their wives without their consent were guilty of rape - an unheard-of notion at the time. She also suggested that intercourse be prolonged to give women the opportunity to reach orgasm along with their husbands. In one often-quoted passage from her pamphlet, "The Wedding Night", she suggested that:
Even when a woman has already had pleasurable experience of genital contact, she requires each time to be aroused amorously, before that organ, in its state of activity, can become attractive. For a man to exhibit, to even an experienced wife, his organ ready for action when she herself is not amorously aroused, is, as a rule, not sexually attractive to her; on the contrary, it is often sexually repulsive, and at times out and out disgusting to her. Every woman of experience knows that, when she is ready, she can cause the man to become sexually active fast enough.
Considering that a husband's "rights" were considered to automatically trump a wife's "duties" at the time, Ida Craddock was proposing nothing less than a major shift in the relationship between men and women. Though she was hardly the only sexual heretic during that same period (Havelock Ellis was fighting his own battles with censors in the United Kingdom), her books and pamphlets came under fire by Anthony Comstock's morality crusade. In 1894, Ida Craddock wrote an article defending a controversial belly dancer "Little Egypt" whose erotic performances led to Comstock's demand that her burlesque show be shut down. After attending the dancer's performance at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Craddock wrote that the dancing was actually a sign of a woman's sexual self-control. In an article published in "The World", she even went so far as to suggest that the same dance be taught to married women to enhance their own sex lives.
Anthony Comstock declared her article to be "obscene" and banned any attempt at sending it through the mail (which blocked national distribution for the paper that published it). In the meantime, Ida Craddock's mother was making arrangements to have her daughter committed and even threatened to burn all her papers and manuscripts if successful. Though she was forcibly admitted to the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane in 1898, she was released after only three months without any legal decision being made about her sanity.
After failing to have Little Egypt's show shut down, Anthony Comstock decided to go after Ida Craddock instead. Not long after her release from the hospital, Comstock had her arrested for sending copies of her pamphlet "Right Marital Living" through the mail. She was released after famed lawyer Clarence Darrow came to her defense. She followed up on this victory by moving to New York City and providing sex counseling right under Anthony Comstock's nose. About her decision to move to New York City, she would say that: ""I have an inward feeling that I am really divinely led here to New York to face this wicked and depraved man Comstock in open court."
But her battle against Anthony Comstock was likely hopeless from the start. Not only did he have far more supporters than Craddock was able to overcome, he had the law on his side as well. On March 5, 1902, Ida Craddock was arrested for trying to send copies of her pamplet, "The Wedding Night" through the mail. Her trial was a foregone conclusion since the judge labelled her work "indescribably obscene" and refused to have it presented to the jury. The members of the jury declared her guilty even though they had to rely on the judge's opinion completely. According to one newspaper, the jury found her guilty without even bothering to meet in private to discuss the case.
Sentenced to three months in the local workhouse, Ida Craddock had to cope with the harsh prison conditions as well as abuse from the guards and other prisoners. Despite free speech advocates rallying to her cause, she was immediately rearrested under the federal Comstock law once her sentence was completed. In the new trial, she refused to let her lawyers try to help her with an insanity plea. On October 10, she was found guilty and sentenced to a five-year sentence.
Ida Craddock likely felt she had no options left at that point since she would never survive in the federal women's prison. On October 16, the day before she was to report to prison, her body was found in her apartment. She had slashed her wrists and left the gas running in her apartment although which of these actually killed her is still a mystery.
Along with a private letter to her mother, Ida Craddock also left behind a public suicide note to explain her reasons for killing herself. Not surprisingly, the note placed the blame for her death squarely on Anthony Comstock and his morality crusade. The note read, in part, that:
I am taking my life because a judge, at the instigation of Anthony Comstock, has declared me guilty of a crime I did not commit--the circulation of obscene literature. Perhaps it may be that in my death, more than in my life, the American people may be shocked into investigating the dreadful state of affairs which permits that unctuous sexual hypocrite Anthony Comstock to wax fat and arrogant and to trample upon the liberties of the people, invading, in my own case, both my right to freedom of religion and to freedom of the press."
As for the private letter left behind for her mother, she simply stated that "I maintain my right to die as I have lived, a free woman, not cowed into silence by any other human being." Despite attempts at rereleasing many of her books in the years after her death, Ida Craddock has been largely forgotten, even for her feminist achievements. A sexual pioneer was simply too controversial to be remembered properly at that point in history.
As for Anthony Comstock, he proudly added Ida Craddock's name to the list of people driven to suicide by his "fight for the young" (along with fourteen other names). Still, public opinion slowly turned against him and his crusade during the last years of his life. Anti-Comstock newspaper editorials became more common and donations to his Society for the Suppression of Vice fell off sharply. Comstock himself had numerous health problems, including neurological complications from a head injury inflicted by an anonymous attacker.
Along with Ida Craddock's suicide, Comstock's hardline policies often made him a laughing stock. That was especially true after he organized a 1906 raid on the Art Students League to seize pamphlets containing nude sketches. Despite calls for him to step down and turn over the operation of his Society to others (which he was forced to do in 1913), Comstock's influence on federal laws was as strong as ever. President Woodrow Wilson appointed him to head the American delegation to the International Purity Conference held in San Francisco in 1915 and openly praised Comstock for his work.
Still, in his old age, Anthony Comstock was likely bewildered by the changing morality in society. Even before the outbreak of World War I in Europe, the demand for condoms was greater than ever and the laws banning their distribution through the mail seemed antiquated. Brothels and individual sex trade workers were busier than ever and birth control advocates such as Margaret Sanger were fighting to make contraception available to everyone. It was Margaret Sanger who faced Comstock's special wrath due to her birth control activism.
Margaret Sanger Fights Back
Ironically, Comstock's crusade was likely what turned Margaret Sanger into a birth control advocate in the first place Her own research into contraception and abortion turned up no available information, largely thanks to Comstock's moral purge. Even medical textbooks failed to cover the subject. As Sanger herself would note in her autobiography, "At the end of six months I was convinced that there was no practical medical information on contraception available in America". This lack of information spurred her to published her own pamphlet, Family Limitation, in 1914 which immediately put her at odds with Comstock. Sanger was forced to flee the country to avoid being arrested and traveled to the United Kingdom to become Havelock Ellis' protege. An undercover sting operation by Comstock's investigators led to the arrest of her husband, William, who was charged with distributing his wife's pamphlet. After threatening William Sanger with jail to force him to reveal 
his wife's location (he refused), he was tried and sentenced to spend 30 days in jail.
Though Margaret Sanger's crusade was just beginning, William Sanger's trial marked the end of Anthony Comstock. Whether it was testifying against Sanger in his trial or traveling to San Francisco for the International Purity Conference, Comstock managed to catch a chill that turned into pneumonia. He died suddenly on September 21, 1915 and is buried in Brooklyn's Evergreen cemetery with the inscription "In memory of a fearless witness."
Though Anthony Comstock's death was likely viewed with a sense of relief by many of his critics, his legacy definitely lived on after him. And it was not a completely negative one considering his crusade was also directed against unscrupulous medical doctors and quack remedies (which were often used to induce abortions among other things). Still, Comstock's crusade had led to over 4,000 arrests and the destruction of over 15 tons of books, 284,00 pounds of printing plates for printing "objectionable books" and nearly 4,000,000 "obscene pictures". He also inspired numerous moral crusaders to continue his work including a very young J. Edgar Hoover who would follow in Comstock's footsteps once he took over the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In many ways, Hoover would be Anthony Comstock's most fearsome supporter and his own moral crusade against "Un-Americanism" would use investigative tactics that Comstock pioneered.
Dealing with The Comstock Act
As for Margaret Sanger, she would be arrested after opening the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn in 1916 and her resulting trial in 1917 would lead to the first major challenge of the Comstock Act. Despite Sanger's conviction which led to her being sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse and the final closing of her clinic, her appeal of this decision would lead to the 1918 Crane decision and the greater liberalization of laws against birth control. Despite strong lobbying by Sanger and her National Committee for Federal Legislation on Birth Control, Congress refused to change the Comstock Act. Still, progress would be made, especially with the 1936 United States vs One Package of Japanese Peccaries case.
After a shipment of Japanese contraceptives ordered by Sanger was seized on arrival in the United States, a final decision by the United States Court of Appeals would strike down the Comstock provisions declaring contraceptives obscene. At long last, medical doctors across the country were free to ship contraceptives to patients and distribute birth control information by mail though the "chastity laws" would still be in place in many U.S. states. Margaret Sanger's crusade would continue for the rest of her life and the Comstock Act would impede birth control advocates for years after Comstock's death. Even the struggle to develop the first oral contraceptive was adversely affected by Comstock laws in many states. As recently as 1965 in fact, a court decision would be needed to strike down Comstock laws remaining in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
The Comstock Act would also play a role in later legal decisions over the definition of obscenity, including any information relating to sex education. The 1933 case, United States vs One Book Called Ulysses, which dealt with freedom of expression and the release of James Joyce's classic book Ulysses represented one of the first true cases of censorship of cultural materials. There have been numerous other examples in the United States however. Even up to 1958, any printed material referring to homosexuality was deemed obscene as well though "nudist" publications featuring erotic images of women had been declared legal decades earlier.
While the overly repressive Comstock standard has been replaced by the somewhat less restrictive Miller test in U.S. court decisions, the issue of obscenity and censorship has hardly been settled. Especially given the current conservatism in U.S.and the new battle against the teaching of sex education and birth control in schools. The next chapter in Anthony Comstock's saga has yet to be written...
