Anthony Comstock's House 35 Beekman Rd

Anthony Comstock was born on March 7th, 1844 in New Canaan, Connecticut to a Christian family. His issues with Vice began in his teens after he was punished by his father for drinking a bottle of wine with a friend. It is reported that he never drank again. Public safety became an important thing to Comstock and would fuel his later attack on obscenity. After a stint fighting in the Civil War, Comstock moved to New York City and married Margaret Hamilton, then settle in Summit, New Jersey.

               After experiencing New York City, Comstock’s hate of obscenity would strengthen. According to Comstock, a friend of his was stated to be “led astray and corrupted and diseased” after being exposed to an obscene book. Comstock couldn’t sit idly by while his friend suffered, so he pushed the police to arrest the bookseller. In 1872, Comstock reached out to the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), who had a history in dealing with obscene issues, to help in the crusade.

               His work with the YMCA would evolve into the Committee for the Suppression of Vice and then would later separate from the YMCA becoming the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV), where his goal was to “ban obscene material from the mails”. Comstock would spend time lobbying for congress to take up his cause, and they would. It is thought that Congress decided to pursue Comstock’s crusade because at the time, certain members of Congress were involved in a scandal regarding selling political influence for railroad profit shares. In order to save their reputation, Congress saw Comstock’s cause as a way to appeal to the greater public.

               Comstock’s crusade would focus on obscene publications, materials on birth control, and “devices to increase sexual potency”. Congress would give him the position of special agent of the Post Office Department in which he would have legal jurisdiction to interpret and enforce the ban of obscene materials in the mail. What would become known as the Comstock Law, the Federal Anti-Obscenity Act would prohibit obscene matter from being imported to the United States, sending or advertising obscene matter in the United States, allow the seizure and destruction of offending materials, and allow punishment for any government official taking part in the trading of it. Those found in violation could be subject to, among other things, fines no larger than five thousand dollars, or be subject to imprisonment and hard labor for up to ten years.

               At the beginning of Comstock’s crusade, obscene literature would be classified and banned if there was a passage depicting something judged as obscene. Later, opposition would successfully fight that context mattered. If a work was obscene for obscenity’s sake, it could be banned, but if it was part of a larger story, it would be alright. The area of Comstock’s sights would widen, moving to target fiction he viewed as a waste of time, or that would affect the morals of young readers, theater, and even violent sports. The wide range of targets would begin to be his downfall, as the public began to disagree with his new additions.

One researcher argues that a main reason Comstock failed was because his attacks only focused on the surface level of society. Times began to change and people began to have new ideas that disagreed with Comstock’s old ways, and he just couldn’t get enough people to back him. This was at the time just after the Civil War, and during the Women’s Suffrage movement. In a big city like New York, progressive ideas took hold. Comstock would get to the point of trying to ban classic works for obscene scenes and ban classical art that depicted naked women. At the turn of the 20th century, society began to move away from ‘Comstockian’ views, although his crusade would leave a lasting impact.

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