Censorship and the Communications Decency Act

Censorship: suppression of words, images, or ideas that are “offensive”. Offensive: giving painful or unpleasant situations.

These two words can easily be looked up and defined when having to use them in a paper, but trying to describe what should be censored and what is offensive is a daunting task. There have always been huge debates over censorship that aims at the First amendment and whether it is constitutional for a group of people to decide what is right for the people.

Even before World War I, there were attacks on what was considered offensive material. “Anthony Comstock, head of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, passed the first censorship law in 1873. The law forbade the mailing of anything, in his opinion, lewd, obscene or indecent.” (Zelezny, 453) The controversy over censorship raged feverishly after WWI and until the Tariff Act of 1930, many literary classics were not allowed into the United States because of the obscenity contained in them. Over a 15-year period, which began in 1957, the Supreme Court made relaxed restrictions on “obscene” material.

Supreme Court decisions struck down many obscenity statues, states responded by enacting laws prohibiting

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Approximate Word count = 1629
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)