This is episode 2 – Why People Want to Ban Stuff. In the last episode I spoke about what I see as part of the reason people give for being able to ban books. Not the reasons as to why they want to ban them, but the reason why they think they have the right to demand that a book or video or audio program be banned.

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Book banning or censorship is an issue that people are very passionate about. This emotion runs high on both sides of the issue, there are those who vehemently oppose book bans and censorship and those who are staunchly in favor of them. Since it is emotional, many people are unwilling to actually discuss their reasons for banning and even fewer are willing to compromise on the subject.

So why do people want to ban books? When it comes to a private citizen or a group of citizens wanting to have books banned most often the reason given can be found in several categories. Morality, race relations, or History. In fact, some historians believe the first book ever banned on a national scale in America was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Southern states, who were to become the Confederacy barred the book from stores not only for its pro-abolitionist agenda, but because it brought the entire debate about slavery into focus and caused people to have angry debates about the subject. Many historians also think that the book helped provide a catalyst for the Civil War.

People become upset over what they consider to be lapses in morality, or challenges to the way they were raised and their beliefs. In America that is most often a book or video that deals with sexuality. America has traditionally been seen as a nation that is more likely to block books and videos that are sexual in nature. Many believe that is due to the United States having Anglo-European roots with their conservative moral viewpoints, rather than Latin roots with their more liberal attitudes. Historically America has in fact, practiced censorship in one form or another.

After the Civil War,  around 1870, a government official named Anthony Comstock convinced Congress to pass a law prohibiting the mailing of “pornographic” materials. Under the Comstock Act the definition of pornography was really about as vague as it could be, pornographic included books such as anatomy textbooks, doctors’ pamphlets about reproduction, anything by Oscar Wilde, and even The Canterbury Tales.

These bans, or “comstockery,” as the practice became known, continued into the new century. But by the 1920s, shifts in politics and social mores led booksellers to see themselves as advocates for people’s right to read whatever they wanted. One very interesting fact about the Comstock Act, is that Congress has never repealed it.  In 1971 Congress did remove the law’s provisions related to birth control, and in 1973 after Roe V. Wade, the act’s provisions against abortion were not enforced. However, in 2022 when  the ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe, the Comstock Act once again  came back into law. Many legal scholars have labeled the Comstock Act a zombie law, because while parts have been invalidated by the courts, Congress has never repealed it. 

Under the act booksellers fought to be able to provide what people wanted to read, and were for the most part successful, especially with the ruling in 1933, in The United States v. One Book Called Ulysses case, that helped usher in a new era of legal interpretation of the First Amendment. However, at the same time, a new technology and way of expressing ideas had come into being. Movies, and almost immediately they became a target for the censor.

From 1930s to 1968 Hollywood operated under what was known as “the Hays Code”. The code was eventually replaced in 1968 with the Motion Picture Association of America film ratings which are still used in the US today. Why did the Hays Code come into existence? The code dealt with the exact same issues as the Comstock  Act – Morality.

Specifically, politics and local views on what should and should not be seen by the public. The Hays Code specified what content was acceptable and unacceptable for films for public audiences in the US. One of its founding principles is that “No picture should lower the moral standards of those who see it.” Now this code was not imposed on the film industry by the government or any government agency, the code was adopted by the film industry as a matter of self-defense, in order to make certain that they would be able to distribute films across the nation. Why was this an issue? Because of local community bans and censorship.

According to film industry historians, before the code was established, many states and communities had their own film censorship boards. Those boards often decided what was acceptable or unacceptable for their audiences. This meant that US studios producing films for national audiences risked bans in large markets over questionable content.  It’s important to remember that only 10 years earlier, Prohibition was established outlawing the purchase of alcohol which gave birth to what we call The Roaring Twenties, which many saw as a time of loose morals. This tightening of the moral code regarding drinking also extended to legislators passing film censorship bills and decency laws. In 1921 alone over one hundred film censorship laws were put forward. In 1930 The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (later the Motion Picture Association) decided it was better to police themselves than to try to wade through complex and constantly changing state and local decency laws, so the code was adopted and enforced beginning in 1934.

Films were prohibited from showing things such as excessive displays of drinking liquor, adultery, sex scenes, sex perversion, sex hygiene and venereal disease, scenes of childbirth, vulgarity, obscenity , profanity, nudity, dances suggesting or representing sexual actions or emphasizing indecent movements, and any mocking of religion. If a person was born in the 40s, 50s, and part of the 60s, that is the code we, I’m a boomer, grew up with. When you listen to almost any person who is proposing certain books be banned or censored, you’ll most likely find they discuss or mention something in one of the morality topics.  Some who propose banning books do think they have the best interests of society at heart.

However,  it’s important to remember that when a person shows up at a city council meeting and demands that certain books be banned, it is highly unlikely they have ever even read any of the books. What has happened is they have been influenced by a news network, people on social media, and others who all have a vested interest in the issue. They have been living in what we call an echo chamber where the only voices they hear are those who are scared of the same things that frighten them. They live in a world where everyone who is different is evil and  the media knows they can earn enormous profits by playing on those fears.

I think that’s going to do it for this episode, next week, I’ll look deeper into one of the other reasons people want to ban or censor books and that is how those books discuss  history.  Remember everything that happens in the United States happens because of politics and the selection of books for libraries and schools are always influenced by politics.

As with all of my work, I approach things from the perspective of a historian and the interdisciplinary perspective, in that, I believe there are no simple answers to the questions we face as a society. Until then, read what you want to read and encourage others to do the same.

Peace y’all