For Part 3 of this series drawing on excerpts from my new book, “Sex and the Constitution,” I thought a bit of history on the concept of obscenity might be fun:

From the early 19th century to the present, moral and religious concerns over sexually-oriented expression have played a central role in legal and constitutional debates about freedom of speech in the United States. In ancient times, though, sexual explicitness in drama, poetry, art and sculpture was not considered offensive, shameful or harmful. Although Greece and Rome punished seditious, blasphemous and heretical expression, they did not punish expression because it was “obscene.”

After the rise of Christianity, censorship on religious grounds became more prevalent, but for more than a thousand years neither the Church nor the state censored sexual expression because it was thought to be obscene. Indeed, the English language did not even have a definitive word for offensive sexual expression until the 16th century, and even then the word — “bawdy” — did not have a negative connotation. Bawdy ballads, poems and plays might have offended some people, but they were not thought to present a problem appropriate for official intervention.

Read more at The Washington Post