obscene literature

Named for the former dry-goods salesman and anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock, the Comstock Act was passed in 1873 as part of a broader sexual purity campaign aimed at curbing the distribution of obscene literature and other materials perceived as promoting sex for pleasure rather than for procreation.

Looking back on his career just before his death in 1915, Comstock boasted of having “convicted persons enough to fill a passenger train of sixty-one coaches,” and having “destroyed 160 tons of obscene literature.”

Postal Service for the transmission of obscene literature, contraceptives and abortion-inducing materials.

In 1873, Comstock, who headed the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, persuaded Congress to pass “An Act for the Suppression of Trade In, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use.”

The poem's references to drugs and gay and straight sex led to a high-profile trial in 1957, which saw Ferlinghetti and City Lights manager Shigeyoshi Murao charged with disseminating obscene literature.