A new “family” edition of Shakespeare is published by Thomas Bowdler. It expurgates the racy stuff. A new verb enters the lexicon: “to bowdlerize,” to remove what cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family. Big seller in the United States.
Anthony Comstock, a New York grocer and religious fanatic, spurs laws banning obscene literature from the mails. He “exposes” such offending writers as Voltaire. “Comstockery” (as George Bernard Shaw called it) is born. In 1882, Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” is banned in Boston. Years later, Comstock wins appointment to President Woodrow Wilson’s International Purity Congress.
Two classics are declared obscene by Massachusetts courts: Theodore Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy” and D. H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.” The efforts of such groups as the National Organization for Decent Literature take up where Comstock left off. Three years later, the rush to censor suffers a blow: “Ulysses,” by James Joyce, is found by a federal court not to be obscene.
The U.S. Supreme Court takes its first look at obscenity and the First Amendment, upholding the conviction of Manhattan bookseller Samuel Roth. Its definition of smut: material appealing to the prurient interest (tending to “excite lustful thoughts”). How to draw the line? The justices can’t agree. In 1964, Potter Stewart offers the most honest, and least helpful, definition: “I know it when I see it. '
The justices keep searching for a definition. They even screen movies. (After “Sexual Freedom in Denmark,” Thurgood Marshall turned to Harry Blackmun: “Well, Harry, I didn’t learn anything. How about you?”) By 1973, the court becomes more conservative. An obscene work must appeal to the prurient interest, contain patently offensive conduct and lack artistic, literary, political or scientific value. Local communities can help define those standards. That’s still the test.
Legal gymnastics seem to wane in the 1970s and early 1980s, until the rise of the New Right. The Justice Department in the Reagan administration cracks down on obscenity and pornography, though the Supreme Court has little to say. In 1990 two legal proceedings galvanize activists on both sides: in Florida a federal judge declares a record album by the rap group 2 Live Crew obscene; and a Cincinnati judge rules that a museum director, Dennis Barrie, must stand trial for obscenity (for exhibiting photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe).
