Censorship

CENSORSHIP IS THE practice of restraining or con-trolling communication on the basis of content. Because of the strong tradition of First Amendment rights to freedom of expression, censorship has negative connotations in the United States, but in many other parts of the world it is an accepted part of life. Censorship may be formal, in which it is part of official government policy and enforced by police and the courts, or informal, in which community organizations indicate their disapproval of objectionable content. There are four basic types of censorship: morals, military, political, and religious.

In the United States, the political right is most frequently associated with morals censorship, and in particular the suppression of sexual content in the arts. Conservatives have traditionally been very concerned about the possibility that such portrayals can erode the public morality, and as a result have rigorously supported legislation against obscenity and pornography. Conservatives have also objected to favorable portrayals of crime and disrespect for established authority on similar grounds of endangering good moral order.

Obscenity is defined as language or behavior that is lewd or indecent, whereas pornography involves written or pictorial content. However, in common parlance the terms are often used interchangeably. The first federal moral censorship law was passed in 1842 as part of the Tariff Act, and dealt with the importation of objectionable [Page 574]materials from abroad. However, the bestknown decency legislation in the United States is the Comstock Law, passed in 1873 by controversial reformer Anthony Comstock. This law prohibits the mailing of indecent material or information on abortion and birth control. While it was probably intended to be used by police and the courts, in fact it was used to support postal officials' seizure of materials they found objectionable. For 80 years this administrative censorship continued, but social change in the 1960s brought an end to the practice, although the law was never repealed.