So we're talking on Friday, May 12th at about 11 a.m. and what is our subject today?

So Roman, are you familiar with the word commstockery?

No

Well, it refers to over the top

excessive and kind of puritanical forms of censorship. Okay, and it actually refers to Anthony Comstock and he was one of the most

famous anti-vice crusaders of the late 19th century

Comstock looked around at the New York of the 19th century and he just thought it was filthy

filthy filthy filthy. He saw prostitution,

pornography, gambling, ads for sex toys and birth control.

People were just insufficiently pious.

So in 1873 Comstock founded the New York Society for the suppression of vice and that was to

enforce public morality. But the reason why Anthony Comstock is famous today is because of 18 USC

1461

And that's the Comstock act. I've heard now as you started talking, I remember the idea of the Comstock act maybe from the untouchables

I don't know. Oh, yeah, that might have been it. That's right. I mean, that's the kind of anti-vice law

And it's called the Comstock act because it was actually Anthony Comstock who went to Washington and successfully persuaded Congress to pass this

anti-vice law in 1873 and in fact he was so successful

he persuaded also a number of states to pass their own state versions of the Comstock act.

So the original Comstock act criminalized a lot of supposedly obscene materials including materials that we'd consider today protected

by the First Amendment, but I wanted to just focus on the one part. The original act said it was a federal crime to send in the mail any article instrument substance drug medicine or thing that could be used for preventing conception or producing abortion.

So in other words, the Comstock act originally punished the mailing of basically anything that could be tied to birth control or abortion.

But remember in 1873 the kind of constitutionally protected rights that we're familiar with today didn't exist at all

...