The reasons for censorship came with the Pilgrims
across the Atlantic, and in 1650, a book by a solid citizen named
William Pynchon enraged the other leaders of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony because it did not follow Puritan doctrine. They burned
the book and Pynchon had to escape back to England. For more information,
check http://spencer.lib.ku.edu/exhibits/bannedbooks/unitedstates.html.
Censorship for religious reasons wasn't the only concern in the
United States in the 17th and 18th centuries. The arrest and trial
of John Peter Zenger, who published the New York Weekly Journal
from 1733 to 1746, was significant because the jury found him
innocent of seditious libel against the government.
The First Amendment,
protecting the freedoms of speech, religion, and the press, was
added to the Constitution in 1791. But, a mere seven years later
in 1798, Congress passed the Sedition Act, making it illegal for
people to criticize the government. Though it was later repealed,
its passage was a good reminder that governmental and political
desire to gain security and power can undermine freedom of expression.
In 1873, freedom of expression took a different
type of hit from a New Yorker, Anthony Comstock, who was on a
mission to seek out and destory all obscene literature. The Comstock
Law of 1873, also known as the Federal Anti-Obscenity Act, banned
the mailing of such "lewd" material as Chaucer's Canterbury
Tales, Defoe's Moll Flanders, and The Arabian Nights.
The Comstock Laws remain on the books today, and "the
Telecommunications Reform Bill of 1996 even specifically applied
some of them to computer networks." More information is at
http://www.digital.library.upenn.edu/books/banned-books.html.
On the other hand, Aritstohphanes' Lysistrata, originally
on the list, was declared mailable after a successful court challenge
in 1955. http://www.thefileroom.org/documents/dyn/DisplayCase.cfm/id/14
Efforts to maintain the authority of church doctrine,
to keep the government secure and powerful, and to protect the
innocent from "filth" have given the United States a
lively history of censorship. What forms is censorship taking
today?
Next...
