Banning a book from anywhere is a serious action to take, and the reasons given for banning some of these books have ranged everywhere from “objectionable material” to “indecency.” They have been banned from schools, public libraries, even the country. But, why? What makes a book so objectionable that the United States says its citizens cannot read it? Or any other country for that matter? Book banning on the national level is nearly out of date, but in smaller circles, such as public schools, the war still rages on. At the top of the current hit list is the boy wizard himself, “Harry Potter.”
We are all familiar with the infamous book burnings that the Nazi’s carried out. This is perhaps the most recognizable image in our minds of literature being kept from the public, in the most extreme way, but it is not so well known that America has gone to extremes to exclude certain books from the public as well. In 1873 the Comstock Law was passed and banned from all U.S. mail any literature which the government deemed “obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy, or vile.” The law got its name from its chief proponent, Anthony Comstock, a former dry goods clerk turned moral activist. He was also given the post of Special Agent by the U.S. Postal Service, under which he was able to destroy nearly 120 tons of literature he found to be obscene. Along with fictional novels, Comstock fought against published information on sexuality, reproduction, and birth control.
Given that the mail was not allowed to send any books, this obviously had an impact on publishing, importing, and exporting. It was an effective way of stamping out literature, without burning it, but in many ways, had the same effect. The U.S. also banned such materials as draft dodging information, pacifist papers, and during the Civil War the early rumblings of the Comstock Law appeared when the government intervened in men sending pictures of pin-up girls through the mail.
The U.S. is not the only country to have banned books...in fact banning has been going on for hundreds of years, and has ranged from mere children’s books, to scientific papers.
In China there is an entire sect whose literature is banned from being read by the rest of the country. In Burma, the Bible is banned form being translated into local dialects. For thirty years,
