Lenny Bruce Obscenity arrests What was Bruce arrested for? On October 4, 1961, Bruce was arrested for obscenity at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco; Did he get jail time? Although the jury acquitted him, other law enforcement agencies began monitoring his appearances, resulting in frequent arrests under charges of obscenity. What other times was he arrested? Bruce was arrested again in 1961, in Philadelphia, for drug possession Any other arrests? again in Los Angeles, two years later. The Los Angeles arrest took place in then-unincorporated West Hollywood, and the arresting officer was a young deputy Did this arrest record have any negative effects for Bruce? Solomon later saw his conviction overturned; Bruce, who died before the decision, never had his conviction stricken. Who was Solomon? Bruce and club owner Howard Solomon were both found guilty of obscenity on November 4, 1964.
What is considered to be "obscenity" in these arrests?
What was considered to be "obscenity" in Lenny Bruce's arrests?
On October 4, 1961, Bruce was arrested for obscenity at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco; he had used the word cocksucker and riffed that "to is a preposition, come is a verb", that the sexual context of come is so common that it bears no weight, and that if someone hearing it becomes upset, he "probably can't come". Although the jury acquitted him, other law enforcement agencies began monitoring his appearances, resulting in frequent arrests under charges of obscenity.  Bruce was arrested again in 1961, in Philadelphia, for drug possession and again in Los Angeles, two years later. The Los Angeles arrest took place in then-unincorporated West Hollywood, and the arresting officer was a young deputy named Sherman Block, who later became County Sheriff. The specification this time was that the comedian had used the word schmuck, an insulting Yiddish term that is an obscene term for penis. The Hollywood charges were later dismissed.  On December 5, 1962, Bruce was arrested on stage at the legendary Gate of Horn folk club in Chicago. The same year he played at Peter Cook's The Establishment club in London, and in April the next year he was barred from entering England by the Home Office as an "undesirable alien".  In April 1964, he appeared twice at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village, with undercover police detectives in the audience. He was arrested along with the club owners, Howard and Elly Solomon, who were arrested for allowing an obscene performance to take place. On both occasions, he was arrested after leaving the stage, the complaints again pertaining to his use of various obscenities.  A three-judge panel presided over his widely publicized six-month trial, prosecuted by Manhattan Assistant D.A. Richard Kuh, with Ephraim London and Martin Garbus as the defense attorneys. Bruce and club owner Howard Solomon were both found guilty of obscenity on November 4, 1964. The conviction was announced despite positive testimony and petitions of support from - among other artists, writers and educators - Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Jules Feiffer, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, William Styron, and James Baldwin, and Manhattan journalist and television personality Dorothy Kilgallen and sociologist Herbert Gans. Bruce was sentenced on December 21, 1964 to four months in a workhouse; he was set free on bail during the appeals process and died before the appeal was decided. Solomon later saw his conviction overturned; Bruce, who died before the decision, never had his conviction stricken. Bruce later received a full posthumous gubernatorial pardon. CANNOTANSWER
he had used the word cocksucker and riffed that "to is a preposition, come is a verb",
Leonard Alfred Schneider (October 13, 1925 – August 3, 1966), known professionally as Lenny Bruce, was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, and satirist. He was renowned for his open, freestyle and critical form of comedy which contained satire, politics, religion, sex, and vulgarity. His 1964 conviction in an obscenity trial was followed by a posthumous pardon in 2003.

Bruce paved the way for counterculture-era comedians. His trial for obscenity is a landmark for freedom of speech in the United States. In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him third (behind Richard Pryor and George Carlin) on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time.

Early life
Lenny Bruce was Jewish, born Leonard Alfred Schneider, in Mineola, New York. He grew up in nearby Bellmore, and attended Wellington C. Mepham High School. His parents divorced before he turned 10, and he lived with various relatives over the next decade. His British-born father, Myron (Mickey) Schneider, was a shoe clerk, and the two saw each other very infrequently. Bruce's mother, Sally Marr (legal name Sadie Schneider, born Sadie Kitchenberg), was a stage performer and had an enormous influence on Bruce's career.

After spending time working on a farm, Bruce joined the United States Navy at the age of 16 in 1942, with active service during World War II aboard the  in Northern Africa; Palermo, Italy, in 1943; and Anzio, Italy, in 1944. In May 1945, after a comedic performance for his shipmates in which he was dressed in drag, his commanding officers became upset. He defiantly convinced his ship's medical officer that he was experiencing homosexual urges. This led to his undesirable discharge in July 1945. However, he had not admitted to or been found guilty of any breach of naval regulations and successfully applied to have his discharge changed to "Under Honorable Conditions ... by reason of unsuitability for the naval service".

During the Korean War era, Bruce served in the United States Merchant Marine, ferrying troops from the US to Europe and back. In 1959, while taping the first episode of Hugh Hefner's Playboy's Penthouse, Bruce talked about his Navy experience and showed a tattoo he received in Malta in 1942.

After a short period living with his father in California, Bruce settled in New York City, hoping to establish himself as a comedian. However, he found it difficult to differentiate himself from the thousands of other show-business hopefuls who populated the city. One locale where they congregated was Hanson's, the diner where Bruce first met the comedian Joe Ancis, who had a profound influence on Bruce's approach to comedy. Many of Bruce's later routines reflected his meticulous schooling at the hands of Ancis. According to Bruce's biographer Albert Goldman, Ancis's humor involved stream-of-consciousness sexual fantasies and references to jazz.

Bruce took the stage as "Lenny Marsalle" one evening at the Victory Club, as a stand-in master of ceremonies for one of his mother's shows. His ad-libs earned him some laughs. Soon afterward, in 1947, just after changing his last name to Bruce, he earned $12 and a free spaghetti dinner for his first stand-up performance in Brooklyn. He was later a guest—and was introduced by his mother, who called herself "Sally Bruce"—on the Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts radio program. Lenny did a piece inspired by Sid Caesar, "The Bavarian Mimic", featuring impressions of American movie stars (e.g., Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson).

Career
Bruce's early comedy career included writing the screenplays for Dance Hall Racket in 1953, which featured Bruce, his wife Honey Harlow, and mother Sally Marr; Dream Follies in 1954, a low-budget burlesque romp; and a children's film, The Rocket Man, in 1954. In 1956, Frank Ray Perilli, a fellow nightclub comedian who eventually became a screenwriter of two dozen successful films and plays, became a mentor and part-time manager of Bruce. Through Perilli, Bruce met and collaborated with photojournalist William Karl Thomas on three screenplays (Leather Jacket, Killer's Grave and The Degenerate), none of which made it to the screen, and the comedy material on his first three comedy albums.

Bruce was a roommate of Buddy Hackett in the 1950s. The two appeared on the Patrice Munsel Show (1957–1958), calling their comedy duo the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players", twenty years before the cast of Saturday Night Live used the same name. In 1957, Thomas booked Bruce into the Slate Brothers nightclub, where he was fired the first night for what Variety headlined as "blue material"; this led to the theme of Bruce's first solo album on Berkeley-based Fantasy Records, The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce, for which Thomas shot the album cover. Thomas also shot other album covers, acted as cinematographer on abortive attempts to film their screenplays, and in 1989 authored a memoir of their ten-year collaboration titled Lenny Bruce: The Making of a Prophet. The 2016 biography of Frank Ray Perilli titled The Candy Butcher, devotes a chapter to Perilli's ten-year collaboration with Bruce.

Bruce released a total of four albums of original material on Fantasy Records. These albums were later compiled and re-released as The Lenny Bruce Originals. Two later records were produced and sold by Bruce himself, including a 10-inch album of the 1961 San Francisco performances that started his legal troubles. Starting in the late 1960s, other unissued Bruce material was released by Alan Douglas, Frank Zappa and Phil Spector, as well as Fantasy. Bruce developed the complexity and tone of his material in Enrico Banducci's North Beach nightclub, the "hungry i", where Mort Sahl had earlier made a name for himself.

Branded a "sick comic", Bruce was essentially blacklisted from television, and when he did appear thanks to sympathetic fans like Hefner and Steve Allen, it was with great concessions to Broadcast Standards and Practices. Jokes that might offend, like a bit on airplane glue-sniffing teenagers that was done live for The Steve Allen Show in 1959, had to be typed out and pre-approved by network officials. On his debut on Allen's show, Bruce made an unscripted comment on the recent marriage of Elizabeth Taylor to Eddie Fisher, wondering, "Will Elizabeth Taylor become bar mitzvahed?"

In the midst of a severe blizzard, Bruce gave a famous performance at Carnegie Hall at midnight on February 4, 1961. It was recorded and later released as a three-disc set titled The Carnegie Hall Concert. In the posthumous biography about Bruce, Albert Goldman described the night of the concert as follows:

In August 1965, a year before his death, Bruce gave his penultimate performance at San Francisco's Basin Street West, mainly talking about his legal troubles. The filmed performance was released by Rhino Home Video in 1992 as The Lenny Bruce Performance Film.

Personal life
In 1951, Bruce met Honey Harlow, a stripper from Manila, Arkansas. They were married that same year, and Bruce was determined she would
end her work as a stripper. The couple eventually left New York in 1953 for the West Coast, where they got work as a double act at the Cup and Saucer in Los Angeles. Bruce then went on to join the bill at the club Strip City. Harlow found employment at the Colony Club, which was widely known to be the best burlesque club in Los Angeles at the time.

Bruce left Strip City in late 1954 and found work within the San Fernando Valley at a variety of strip clubs. As the master of ceremonies, he introduced the strippers while performing his material. The clubs of the Valley provided the perfect environment for Bruce to create new routines: according to his primary biographer, Albert Goldman, it was "precisely at the moment when he sank to the bottom of the barrel and started working the places that were the lowest of the low" that he suddenly broke free of "all the restraints and inhibitions and disabilities that formerly had kept him just mediocre and began to blow with a spontaneous freedom and resourcefulness that resembled the style and inspiration of his new friends and admirers, the jazz musicians of the modernist school."

Honey and Lenny's daughter Kitty Bruce was born in 1955. Honey and Lenny had a tumultuous relationship. Many serious domestic incidents occurred between them, usually the result of serious drug use. They broke up and reunited over and over again between 1956 and Lenny's death in 1966. They first separated in March 1956, and were back together again by July of that year when they travelled to Honolulu for a night club tour. During this trip, Honey was arrested for marijuana possession. Prevented from leaving the island due to her parole conditions, Lenny took the opportunity to leave her again, and this time kidnapped the then one-year-old Kitty. In her autobiography, Honey claims Lenny turned her in to the police. She would be later sentenced to two years in federal prison.

Throughout the final decade of his life, Bruce was beset by severe drug addiction. He would use heroin, methamphetamine and Dilaudid daily. He suffered numerous health problems and personal strife as a result of his addiction.

He had an affair with the jazz singer Annie Ross in the late 1950s. In 1959, Lenny's divorce from Honey was finalized. At the time of his death, his girlfriend was comedian Lotus Weinstock.

Legal troubles

Bruce's desire to help his wife cease working as a stripper led him to pursue schemes that were designed to make as much money as possible. The most notable was the Brother Mathias Foundation scam, which resulted in Bruce's arrest in Miami, Florida, in 1951 for impersonating a priest. He had been soliciting donations for a leper colony in British Guiana (now Guyana) under the auspices of the "Brother Mathias Foundation", which he had legally chartered—the name was his own invention, but possibly referred to the actual Brother Matthias who had befriended Babe Ruth at the Baltimore orphanage to which Ruth had been confined as a child.

Bruce had stolen several priests' clergy shirts and a clerical collar while posing as a laundry man. He was found not guilty because of the legality of the New York state-chartered foundation, the actual existence of the Guiana leper colony, and the inability of the local clergy to expose him as an impostor. Later, in his semifictional autobiography How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, Bruce said that he had made about $8,000 in three weeks, sending $2,500 to the leper colony and keeping the rest.

Obscenity arrests
On October 4, 1961, Bruce was arrested for obscenity at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco; he had used the word cocksucker and riffed that "to is a preposition, come is a verb", that the sexual context of come is so common that it bears no weight, and that if someone hearing it becomes upset, he "probably can't come". Although the jury acquitted him, other law enforcement agencies began monitoring his appearances, resulting in frequent arrests under charges of obscenity.

Bruce was arrested again in 1961, in Philadelphia, for drug possession and again in Los Angeles, two years later. The Los Angeles arrest took place in then-unincorporated West Hollywood, and the arresting officer was a young deputy named Sherman Block, who later became County Sheriff. The specification this time was that the comedian had used the word schmuck, an insulting Yiddish term that is an obscene term for penis. The Hollywood charges were later dismissed.

On December 5, 1962, Bruce was arrested on stage at the legendary Gate of Horn folk club in Chicago. That same year, he played at Peter Cook's The Establishment club in London, and in April the next year he was barred from entering the United Kingdom by the Home Office as an "undesirable alien".

In April 1964, he appeared twice at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village, with undercover police detectives in the audience. He was arrested along with the club owners, Howard and Elly Solomon, who were arrested for allowing an obscene performance to take place. On both occasions, he was arrested after leaving the stage, the complaints again pertaining to his use of various obscenities.

A three-judge panel presided over his widely publicized six-month trial, prosecuted by Manhattan Assistant D.A. Richard Kuh, with Ephraim London and Martin Garbus as the defense attorneys. Bruce and club owner Howard Solomon were both found guilty of obscenity on November 4, 1964. The conviction was announced despite positive testimony and petitions of support from—among other artists, writers and educators—Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Jules Feiffer, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, William Styron, and James Baldwin, and Manhattan journalist and television personality Dorothy Kilgallen and sociologist Herbert Gans. Bruce was sentenced on December 21, 1964, to four months in a workhouse; he was set free on bail during the appeals process and died before the appeal was decided. Solomon later saw his conviction overturned.

Later years

Despite his prominence as a comedian, Bruce appeared on network television only six times in his life. In his later club performances, he was known for relating the details of his encounters with the police directly in his comedy routine. These performances often included rants about his court battles over obscenity charges, tirades against fascism, and complaints that he was being denied his right to freedom of speech. Bruce was banned outright from several U.S. cities.

In September 1962, his only visit to Australia caused a media storm—although, contrary to popular belief, he was not banned nor was he forced to leave the country. Bruce was booked for a two-week engagement at Aaron's Exchange Hotel, a small pub in central Sydney by the American-born, Australian-based promoter Lee Gordon, who was by then deeply in debt, nearing the end of his formerly successful career, and desperate to save his business. Bruce's first show at 9 p.m. on September 6 was uneventful, but his second show at 11 p.m. led to a major public controversy. Bruce was heckled by audience members during his performance, and when local actress Barbara Wyndon stood up and complained that Bruce was only talking about America, and asked him to talk about something different, a clearly annoyed Bruce responded, "Fuck you, madam. That's different, isn't it?" Bruce's remark shocked some members of the audience and several walked out.

By the next day the local press had blown the incident up into a major controversy, with several Sydney papers denouncing Bruce as "sick" and one even illustrating their story with a retouched photograph appearing to show Bruce giving a fascist salute. The venue owners immediately cancelled the rest of Bruce's performances, and he retreated to his Kings Cross hotel room. Local university students (including future OZ magazine editor Richard Neville) who were fans of Bruce's humor tried to arrange a performance at the Roundhouse at the University of New South Wales, but at the last minute the university's Vice-Chancellor rescinded permission to use the venue, with no reason given and an interview he was scheduled to give on Australian television was cancelled in advance by the Australian Broadcasting Commission.

Bruce remained largely confined to his hotel, but eight days later gave his third and last Australian concert at the Wintergarden Theatre in Sydney's eastern suburbs. Although the theatre had a capacity of 2,100, only 200 people attended, including a strong police presence, and Bruce gave what was described as a "subdued" performance. It was long rumored that a tape recording of Bruce's historic performance was made by police, but it was, in fact, recorded by local jazz saxophonist Sid Powell, who brought a portable tape recorder to the show. The tape was rediscovered in 2011 in the possession of Australian singer Sammy Gaha, who had acted as Bruce's chauffeur during his visit, and it was subsequently donated to the Lenny Bruce audio collection at Brandeis University. Bruce left the country a few days later and spoke little about the experience afterwards.

Increasing drug use also affected Bruce's health. By 1966, he had been blacklisted by nearly every nightclub in the U.S., as owners feared prosecution for obscenity. He gave a famous performance at the Berkeley Community Theatre in December 1965, which was recorded and became his last live album, titled The Berkeley Concert; his performance here has been described as lucid, clear and calm, and one of his best. His last performance took place on June 25, 1966, at The Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, on a bill with Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. The performance was not remembered fondly by Bill Graham, whose memoir describes Bruce as "whacked out on amphetamine;" Graham thought that Bruce finished his set emotionally disturbed. Zappa asked Bruce to sign his draft card, but the suspicious Bruce refused.

At the request of Hefner and with the aid of Paul Krassner, Bruce wrote an autobiography. Serialized in Playboy in 1964 and 1965, this material was later published as the book How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. During this time, Bruce also contributed a number of articles to Krassner's satirical magazine The Realist.

Death and posthumous pardon

On August 3, 1966, Bruce was found dead in the bathroom of his Hollywood Hills home at 8825 W. Hollywood Blvd. The official photo, taken at the scene, showed Bruce lying naked on the floor, a syringe and burned bottle cap nearby, along with various other narcotics paraphernalia. Record producer Phil Spector, a friend of Bruce, bought the negatives of the photographs "to keep them from the press". The official cause of death was "acute morphine poisoning caused by an overdose".

Bruce's remains were interred in Eden Memorial Park Cemetery in Mission Hills, California, but an unconventional memorial on August 21 was controversial enough to keep his name in the spotlight. Over 500 people came to the service to pay their respects, led by Spector. Cemetery officials had tried to block the ceremony after advertisements for the event encouraged attendees to bring box lunches and noisemakers. Delivering the eulogy, which is featured at the end of the documentary Lenny Bruce Without the Tears, the Rev. William Glenesk said:

Lenny Bruce's epitaph reads: "Beloved father—devoted son / Peace at last". Dick Schaap concluded his eulogy to Bruce in Playboy with the words: "One last four-letter word for Lenny: Dead. At forty. That's obscene". A memorial event was held at the Judson Memorial Church, New York City on Friday, August 12, which was "packed to overflowing" an hour before it was due to get underway at 6pm, and was attended by prominent members of the arts, many of whom also performed, and included Allen Ginsberg, Joe Lee Wilson, Jean Shepherd, Charlie Haden, and The Fugs; Paul Krassner officiated.

On December 23, 2003, thirty-seven years after Bruce's death, New York Governor George Pataki granted him a posthumous pardon for his obscenity conviction.

Legacy

Bruce was the subject of the 1974 biographical film Lenny, directed by Bob Fosse and starring Dustin Hoffman (in an Academy Award-nominated Best Actor role), and based on the Broadway stage play of the same name written by Julian Barry and starring Cliff Gorman in his 1972 Tony Award–winning role. In addition, the main character's editing of a fictionalized film version of Lenny was a major part of Fosse's own autobiopic, the 1979 Academy Award–nominated All That Jazz; Gorman again played the role of the stand-up comic.

The documentary Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth, directed by Robert B. Weide and narrated by Robert De Niro, was released in 1998. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

In 2004, Comedy Central listed Bruce at number three on its list of the 100 greatest stand-ups of all time, placing above Woody Allen (4th) and below Richard Pryor (1st) and George Carlin (2nd). Both comedians who ranked higher than Bruce considered him a major influence; Pryor said that hearing Bruce for the first time "changed my life," while Carlin said that Bruce was a "brilliant comedian" who influenced him as much as a man in his moral thinking and attitudes as he did as a comedian. Carlin was arrested along with Bruce after refusing to provide identification when police raided a Bruce performance.

In popular culture
 In 1966, Grace Slick co-wrote and sang the Great Society song "Father Bruce".
 Bruce is pictured in the top row of the cover of the Beatles 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
 The clip of a news broadcast featured in "7 O'Clock News/Silent Night" by Simon & Garfunkel carries the ostensible newscast audio of Lenny Bruce's death. In another track on the album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, "A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara'd into Submission)," Paul Simon sings, "... I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce, that all my wealth won't buy me health."
 Tim Hardin's fourth album Tim Hardin 3 Live in Concert, released in 1968, includes his song Lenny's Tune written about his friend Lenny Bruce.
 Nico's 1967 album Chelsea Girl includes a track entitled "Eulogy to Lenny Bruce," which was "Lenny's Tune" by Tim Hardin, with the lyrics slightly altered. In it she describes her sorrow and anger at Bruce's death.
 The Stranglers' 1977 song No More Heroes (The Stranglers song) references Lenny Bruce, asking "Whatever happened to dear old Lenny?".
 Bob Dylan's 1981 song "Lenny Bruce" from his Shot of Love album describes a brief taxi ride shared by the two men. In the last line of the song, Dylan recalls: "Lenny Bruce was bad, he was the brother that you never had." Dylan has included this song live in concert as recently as November 2019.
 Phil Ochs wrote a song eulogizing the late comedian, titled "Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore?" The song is featured on his 1969 album Rehearsals for Retirement.
 Australian group Paul Kelly And The Dots' 1982 album Manila features a track named "Lenny (To Live Is to Burn)", which includes a couple clips of Lenny Bruce performing.
 R.E.M.'s 1987 song "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" includes references to a quartet of famous people all sharing the initials L.B. with Lenny Bruce being one of them (the others being Leonard Bernstein, Leonid Brezhnev and Lester Bangs). The opening line of the song mentioning Bruce goes, "That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds, snakes and aeroplanes; Lenny Bruce is not afraid."
 Lenny Bruce appears as a character in Don DeLillo's 1997 novel Underworld. In the novel, Bruce does a stand-up routine about the Cuban Missile Crisis.
 Genesis' 1974 song "Broadway Melody of 1974" depicts a dystopic New York where "Lenny Bruce declares a truce and plays his other hand, Marshall McLuhan, casual viewin', head buried in the sand" and "Groucho, with his movies trailing, stands alone with his punchline failing."
 Jonathan Larson's musical RENT, has a song entitled, La Vie Boheme B, mentioning Lenny Bruce.
 Joy Zipper's 2005 album The Heartlight Set features a track named "For Lenny's Own Pleasure".
 Nada Surf's song "Imaginary Friends" (from their 2005 album The Weight Is a Gift) references Lenny Bruce in its lyrics: "Lenny Bruce's bug eyes stare from an LP, asking me just what kind of fight I've got in me."
 Shmaltz Brewing Company brews a year-round beer called Bittersweet Lenny's R.I.P.A. and the tagline is "Brewed with an obscene amount of hops".
 Metric's song "On the Sly" (from their 2007 album Grow Up and Blow Away) references Lenny Bruce in its lyrics: "for Halloween I want to be Lenny Bruce".
 In the 2014 episode "Comic Perversion" of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, fictional comic Josh Galloway says while being arrested, "I would like to dedicate my arrest to Mr. Lenny Bruce. NYPD crucified him, too."
 John Mayall's 1969 live album "The turning point" opens with the song "The laws must change", which features the line "Lenny Bruce was trying to tell you many things before he died".
 A fictionalized version of the comedian is played by Luke Kirby as a recurring character in the Amazon series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, in which he is portrayed as a friend and champion of the titular character. Kirby won an Emmy for his portrayal in 2019.

Bibliography

 Bruce, Lenny. Stamp Help Out! (Self-published pamphlet, 1962)
 Bruce, Lenny. How to Talk Dirty and Influence People (Playboy Publishing, 1967)
 Autobiography, released posthumously. Content previously serialized in Playboy magazine.

By others:
 Barry, Julian. Lenny (play) (Grove Press, Inc. 1971)
 Bruce, Honey. Honey: The Life and Loves of Lenny's Shady Lady (Playboy Press, 1976, with Dana Benenson)
 Bruce, Kitty. The (almost) Unpublished Lenny Bruce (1984, Running Press) (includes transcripts of interviews and routines, ephemera, and a graphically spruced up reproduction of 'Stamp Help Out!')
 Cohen, John, ed., compiler. The Essential Lenny Bruce (Ballantine Books, 1967)
 Collins, Ronald and David Skover, The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall & Rise of an American Icon (Sourcebooks, 2002)
 DeLillo, Don. Underworld, (Simon and Schuster Inc., 1997)
 Denton, Bradley. The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians, an award-winning collection of science fiction stories in which the title story has Lenny Bruce as one of the two protagonists.
 Goldman, Albert, with Lawrence Schiller. Ladies and Gentlemen – Lenny Bruce!! (Random House, 1974)
 Goldstein, Jonathan. Lenny Bruce Is Dead (Coach House Press, 2001)
 Josepher, Brian. What the Psychic Saw (Sterlinghouse Publisher, 2005)
 Kofsky, Frank. Lenny Bruce: The Comedian as Social Critic & Secular Moralist (Monad Press, 1974)
 Kringas, Damian. Lenny Bruce: 13 Days In Sydney (Independence Jones Guerilla Press, Sydney, 2010) A study of Bruce's ill-fated September 1962 tour down under.
 Marciniak, Vwadek P., Politics, Humor and the Counterculture: Laughter in the Age of Decay (New York etc., Peter Lang, 2008).
 Marmo, Ronnie. I'm Not a Comedian... I'm Lenny Bruce (written/performed by Marmo, directed by Joe Mantegna, 2017)
 Smith, Valerie Kohler. Lenny (novelization based on the Barry-scripted/Fosse-directed film) (Grove Press, Inc., 1974)
 Thomas, William Karl. Lenny Bruce: The Making of a Prophet Memoir and pictures from Bruce's principal collaborator. First printing, Archon Books, 1989; second printing, Media Maestro, 2002; Japanese edition, DHC Corp. Tokyo, 2001.

Filmography

Discography

Albums

Posthumous releases

Compilations
The later compilations are released in the European Union under various oldies labels, as the content used is public domain in the EU.

Audiobooks

Tribute albums

See also

 List of civil rights leaders
 Dirtymouth, a 1970 biographical film about Bruce

Footnotes

References

External links

The Official Lenny Bruce Website
FBI Records: The Vault – Lenny Bruce at fbi.gov

Correspondence and Other Papers Pertaining to Lenny Bruce's Drug Case, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Articles
Linder, Douglas, "The Lenny Bruce Trial: An Account" "Famous Trials: The Lenny Bruce Trial, 1964"
Azlant, Edward. "Lenny Bruce Again", Shecky Magazine, August 22, 2006
Gilmore, John. "Lenny Bruce and the Bunny", excerpt from Laid Bare: A Memoir of Wrecked Lives and the Hollywood Death Trip (Amok Books, 1997). 
Harnisch, Larry. "Voices", Los Angeles Times, April 13, 2007. (Reminiscences by saxophonist Dave Pell)
Kaufman, Anthony.  (interview with Swear to Tell the Truth producer), Indiewire.com, April 16, 2008
Hentoff, Nat. "Lenny Bruce: The crucifixion of a true believer", Gadfly March/April 2001
Sloan, Will. "Is Lenny Bruce Still Funny?", Hazlitt, November 4, 2014
Smith, Daniel V. "The Complete Lenny Bruce Chronology" (fan site)
"Lenny Bruce: The Making of a Prophet" Memoir and pictures from Bruce's principal collaborator, Media Maestro 2001.
 [CC-By-SA]

 Audio/video 

Video Clips Relating to the Trial of Lenny Bruce as assembled by the University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School

 
1925 births
1966 deaths
20th-century American comedians
20th-century American memoirists
Accidental deaths in California
American anti-fascists
American humorists
American male comedians
American people convicted of drug offenses
American people of English-Jewish descent
American sailors
American satirists
American social commentators
American stand-up comedians
Beat Generation people
Burials at Eden Memorial Park Cemetery
Censorship in the arts
Comedians from New York (state)
Critics of religions
Critics of the Catholic Church
Drug-related deaths in California
Freedom of speech in the United States
Jewish American male comedians
Jewish anti-fascists
Military personnel from New York (state)
Obscenity controversies in stand-up comedy
People from Bellmore, New York
People from Greenwich Village
People from Mineola, New York
People who have received posthumous pardons
Philles Records artists
Race-related controversies in stand-up comedy
Recipients of American gubernatorial pardons
Religious controversies in stand-up comedy
Social critics
Free speech activists
Stand-up comedy controversies
United States Merchant Mariners
United States Merchant Mariners of the Korean War
United States Navy personnel of World War II
United States Navy sailors
In the United States, distribution of "obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy" materials is a federal crime. The determination of what is "obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy" is up to a jury in a trial, which must apply the Miller test; however, due to the prominence of pornography in most communities most pornographic materials are not considered "patently offensive" in the Miller test.

In 1967, Denmark decriminalized pornography with few adverse effects, and the following year, the United States Supreme Court held that people could view whatever they wished in the privacy of their own homes. These two developments contributed in part to Congress creating the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography in 1968 to investigate the effects of obscenity and pornography on the people of the United States.  Each member of the Commission was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. In what became the most detailed and comprehensive investigation into pornography to date, the Commission in its final report found that pornography could not be shown to do harm to individuals or to society, and recommended the repeal of obscenity and pornography legislation as it related to adults. Released during the presidency of Richard Nixon, the report generated a brief bout of controversy but was ultimately ignored by the administration.

Attorney General for Ronald Reagan Edwin Meese also courted controversy when he appointed the "Meese Commission" to investigate pornography in the United States; their report, released in July 1986, was highly critical of pornography and itself became a target of widespread criticism. That year, Meese Commission chairman Alan Sears sent letters on Commission letterhead to the heads of 23 convenience store chains and other companies, declaring that the Commission would find that they were distributors of pornography and threatening that they would be listed as such in the final Report. In fact, the list of purported distributors had been identified by Donald Wildmon, the head of the conservative Christian advocacy organization that later became the American Family Association. The letters triggered several companies to remove common soft-core pornography magazines as Playboy and Penthouse from store shelves. The American Booksellers Association, the Council for Periodical Distributors Associations, the Magazine Publishers of America, and the publishers of Playboy and Penthouse sued, arguing that the letters constituted prior restraint and were forbidden under the First Amendment. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia agreed, leading it to admonish the Commission order it to withdraw the letter, and forbid it to issue any list of retailers in the report.

In the United States in 2005, George W. Bush's Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made obscenity and pornography a top prosecutorial priority of the Department of Justice.

The conservative religious organization Concerned Women for America polled every U.S. attorney's office to find out what they planned to do about obscenity. Except for a handful of offices that didn't return calls, not one said it had any inclination to pursue anything other than child obscenity cases.

See also
Miller v. California

References

United States, law
Obscenity law
Anti-pornography movements
United States pornography law United States obscenity law deals with the regulation or suppression of what is considered obscenity. In the United States, discussion of obscenity typically relates to pornography, as well as issues of freedom of speech and of the press, otherwise protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Issues of obscenity arise at federal and state levels. The States have a direct interest in public morality and have responsibility in relation to criminal law matters, including the punishment for the production and sale of obscene materials. State laws operate only within the jurisdiction of each state, and there are wide differences in such laws. The federal government is involved in the issue indirectly, by making it an offense to distribute obscene pornographic material depicting children through the post, to broadcast them, as well as in relation to importation of such materials.

Most obscenity cases in the United States in the past century have revolved around images and films, but there have also been many cases that dealt with textual works as well, a notable case being that of the 18th century novel Fanny Hill. Because censorship laws enacted to combat obscenity restrict the freedom of expression, crafting a legal definition of obscenity presents a civil liberties issue.

Legal issues and definitions

The sale and distribution of obscene materials had been prohibited in most American states since the early 19th century, and by federal law since 1873. Adoption of obscenity laws in the United States at the federal level in 1873 was largely due to the efforts of Anthony Comstock, who created and led the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Comstock's intense efforts led to the passage of an anti-obscenity statute known as the Comstock Act which made it a crime to distribute "obscene" material through the post. It also prohibited the use of the mail for distribution of birth control devices and information. Comstock was appointed postal inspector to enforce the new law. Twenty-four states passed similar prohibitions on materials distributed within the states. The law criminalized not only sexually explicit material, but also material dealing with birth control and abortion. However, the legislation did not define "obscenity", which was left to the courts to determine on a case by case basis.

In the United States, the suppression or limitation of what is defined as obscenity raises issues of rights to freedom of speech and of the press protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The Supreme Court has ruled that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment, but that the courts still need to determine whether material in question in each case is obscene.

Legally, a distinction is made between socially permitted material and discussions that the public can access on the one hand and obscenity, access to which should be denied, on the other. There does exist a classification of those acceptable materials and discussions that the public should be allowed to engage in, and the access to that same permitted material—which in the areas of sexual materials ranges between the permitted areas of erotic art (which usually includes "classic nude forms" such as Michelangelo's David statue) and the generally less respected commercial pornography.  The legal distinction between artistic nudity and permitted commercial pornography (which includes sexual penetration) deemed "protected forms of speech", versus "obscene acts", which are illegal acts and separate from those permitted areas, is usually predicated on cultural factors.  However, no such specific objective distinction exists outside of legal decisions in federal court cases where a specific action is deemed to fit the classification of obscene and thus illegal. The difference between erotic art and (protected) commercial pornography, vs. that which is legally obscene (and thus not covered by 1st Amendment protection), appears to be subject to decisions within local US federal districts and contemporary moral standards.

Federal obscenity law in the U.S. is unusual in that there is no uniform national standard, and there is an explicit legal precedent (the Miller test, below) that allows that something which is legally obscene in one jurisdiction may not be in another. In effect, the First Amendment protections of free speech vary by location within the U.S., and over time. With the advent of Internet distribution of potentially obscene material, this question of jurisdiction and community standards has created significant controversy in the legal community. (See United States v. Thomas, 74 F.3d 701 (6th Cir. 1996))

Even at the federal level, there does not exist a specific listing of which exact acts are to be classified as obscene outside of the legally determined court cases.  Title 18, chapter 71 of the USC deals with obscenity, the workings out of the law described in this article, most notably the aforementioned Miller test.

The Citizen's Guide To U.S. Federal Law On Obscenity lists several relevant statutes in regards to obscenity and its qualifications.

Definition of obscenity
Although lower courts in the U.S. had used the Hicklin standard sporadically since 1868, it was not until 1879, when prominent federal judge Samuel Blatchford upheld the obscenity conviction of D. M. Bennett using the Hicklin test, that the constitutionality of the Comstock Law became firmly established.

In Rosen v. United States (1896), the Supreme Court adopted the same obscenity standard as had been articulated in a famous British case, Regina v. Hicklin, [1868] L. R. 3 Q. B. 360. The Hicklin test defined material as obscene if it tended "to deprave or corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall."

In the mid-1950s, the Supreme Court ruled in Roth v. United States,  that the Hicklin test was inappropriate. Instead, the new Roth test for obscenity was:

In 1964, in Jacobellis v. Ohio, Justice Potter Stewart in applying the Roth test pointed out that "community standards" applicable to an obscenity are national, not local standards. He found that the material in question is "utterly without redeeming social importance". In attempting to classify what material constituted exactly "what is obscene," he famously wrote, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced ... [b]ut I know it when I see it ..." In Memoirs v. Massachusetts (1966) (dealing with the banning of the book Fanny Hill) the Court applied the Roth-Jacobellis test to determine that though the other aspects of the test were clear, the censor could not prove that Fanny Hill had no redeeming social value.

In 1973, the Supreme Court in Miller v. California established the three-tiered Miller test to determine what was obscene (and thus not protected) versus what was merely erotic and thus protected by the First Amendment. Delivering the opinion of the court, Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote:

The Miller Test is the current U.S. judicial precedent for determining obscenity.

Past standards 

The following standards were once used by courts to determine obscenity. Each of them has been invalidated, overturned, or superseded by the Miller test.
 Wepplo test (1947): If material has a substantial tendency to deprave or corrupt its readers by inciting lascivious thoughts or arousing lustful desires. (People v. Wepplo, 78 Cal. App. 2d Supp. 959, 178 P.2d 853).
 Hicklin test (1868): the effect of isolated passages upon the most susceptible persons. (British common law, cited in Regina v. Hicklin, 1868. LR 3 QB 360 - overturned when Michigan tried to outlaw all printed matter that would 'corrupt the morals of youth' in Butler v. State of Michigan 352 U.S. 380 (1957)).

Under FCC rules and federal law, radio stations and over-the-air television channels cannot air obscene material at any time and cannot air indecent material between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.: language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory organs or activities.

Many historically important works have been described as obscene or prosecuted under obscenity laws, including the works of Charles Baudelaire, Lenny Bruce, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, and the Marquis de Sade.

Other court cases on obscenity 
 FCC v. Pacifica  (1978) (external link) better known as the landmark "seven dirty words" case. In the decision, the Court found that only "repetitive and frequent" use of the words at a time or place when a minor could hear them could be punished.
In State v. Henry (1987), the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that the Oregon state law that criminalized obscenity was an unconstitutional restriction of free speech under the free speech provision of the Oregon Constitution, with the ruling making Oregon the "first state in the nation to abolish the offense of obscenity."
In Reno v. ACLU (1997), the Supreme Court invalidated several indecency provisions in the 1996 Communications Decency Act applying to the Internet.

Application of test
In U.S. legal texts, the question of "obscenity" refers to the Miller test.  As articulated in several sections of 18 USC Chapter 71, the Supreme Court has ruled that it is constitutional to legally limit the sale, transport for personal use or other transmission of obscenity.  However, it has ruled unconstitutional the passing of law concerning personal possession of obscenity per se. Federal obscenity laws at present apply to inter-state and foreign obscenity issues such as distribution; intrastate issues are for the most part still governed by state law.  "Obscene articles ... are generally prohibited entry" to the United States by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

At present, there are only two legally protected areas of explicit commercial pornography. The first is "mere nudity". In Jenkins v. Georgia, 418 U.S. 153 (1974), the film Carnal Knowledge was deemed not to be obscene under the constitutional standards announced by Miller.  As declared by the trial judge in Jenkins, "The film shows occasional nudity, but nudity alone does not render material obscene under Miller's standards."  This principle was upheld time and again in later cases, including Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville FL, 422 U.S. 205 (1975), in which a Jacksonville city ordinance made it a punishable offense to show films containing nudity when the screen is visible from a public street or place.  The law was determined to be invalid as it was an infringement of First Amendment rights of the movie producer and theater owners.

The second protected area is single male-to-female vaginal-only penetration that does NOT show the actual ejaculation of semen (sometimes referred to as "soft-core" pornography) wherein the sexual act and its fulfillment (orgasm) are merely implied to happen rather than explicitly shown. In June 2006, the federal government brought a case against JM Productions of Chatsworth, California in order to classify commercial pornography that specifically shows actual semen being ejaculated as obscene.  The four films that were the subject of the case were entitled American Bukkake 13, Gag Factor 15, Gag Factor 18 and Filthy Things 6.  The case also included charges of distribution of obscene material (a criminal act under 18 USC § 1465 - "Transportation of obscene matters for sale or distribution") against Five Star DVD for the extra-state commercial distribution of the JM Productions films in question. At trial, the Department of Justice decided not to pursue the JM obscenity case any further. The jury found that Five Star Video LC and Five Star Video Outlet LC were guilty of violating "18 USC 1465 - Transportation of obscene matters for sale or distribution" for having shipped JM Productions' film Gag Factor 18.  However, the specific content that the jury deemed "obscene" was not stated.

Obscenity v. indecency

The differentiation between indecent and obscene material is a particularly difficult one, and a contentious First Amendment issue that has not fully been settled. Similarly, the level of offense (if any) generated by a profane word or phrase depends on region, context, and audience.

Non image-based obscenity cases in the United States

Obscene texts
While most of the obscenity cases in the United States in the past century have revolved around images and films, there have been many cases that dealt with textual works as well.

The classification of "obscene" and thus illegal for production and distribution has been judged on printed text-only stories starting with "Dunlop v. U.S., 165 U.S. 486 (1897)" which upheld a conviction for mailing and delivery of a newspaper called the 'Chicago Dispatch,' containing "obscene, lewd, lascivious, and indecent materials", which was later upheld in several cases. One of these was "A Book Named "John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" v. Attorney General of Com. of Massachusetts, 383 U.S. 413 (1966)" wherein the book Fanny Hill,  written by John Cleland c. 1760, was judged to be obscene in a proceeding that put the book itself on trial rather than its publisher. Another was "Kaplan v. California, 413 U.S. 115 (1973)" whereby the court most famously determined that "Obscene material in book form is not entitled to any First Amendment protection merely because it has no pictorial content."

However, the book was labeled "erotica" in the 1965 case (206 NE 2d 403) and there a division between erotica and obscenity was made—not all items with erotic content were automatically obscene. Further, the 1965 "John Cleland's 'Memoirs'" case added a further qualification for the proving of "obscenity"—the work in question had to inspire or exhibit "prurient" (that is, "shameful or morbid") interest.

In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein, cited Jacobellis v. Ohio (which was decided the same day) and overruled state court findings of obscenity against Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. A unauthorized "Medusa" edition of the novel was published in New York City in 1940 by Jacob Brussel; its title page claimed its place of publication to be Mexico.  Brussel was eventually sent to prison for three years for the edition, a copy of which is in the Library of Congress.

In 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice formed the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force in a push to prosecute obscenity cases. Red Rose Stories (www.red-rose-stories.com, now defunct), a site dedicated to text-only fantasy stories, became one of many sites targeted by the FBI for shutdown.  The government alleged that Red Rose Stories contained depictions of child rape.  The publisher pleaded guilty.

Obscene devices
Many U.S. states have had bans on the sale of sex toys, regulating them as obscene devices. For instance, the 1999 Law and Government of Alabama (Ala. Code. § 13A-12-200.1) made it "unlawful to produce, distribute or otherwise sell sexual devices that are marketed primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs." Alabama claimed that these products were obscene, and that there was "no fundamental right to purchase a product to use in pursuit of having an orgasm." The ACLU challenged the statute, which was overturned in 2002. A federal judge reinstated the law in 2004.  The matter was appealed to the US Supreme Court, who in 2007 refused to hear the case, thus the decision of the lower court is enforceable within the state of Alabama. In 2007, a federal appeals court upheld Alabama's law prohibiting the sale of sex toys. The law, the Anti-Obscenity Enforcement Act of 1998, was also upheld by the Supreme Court of Alabama on September 11, 2009.

But other states have seen their sex toy bans ruled unconstitutional in the courts.  In 2008 the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled a similar Texas statute violated the constitutional right to privacy that was recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Lawrence v. Texas decision. That ruling leaves only Mississippi, Alabama, and Virginia with current bans on the sale of obscene devices. Alabama is the only state with a law specifically prohibiting the sale of sex toys.

Criticism 
Obscenity law has been criticized in the following areas::
 Federal law forbids obscenity in certain contexts (such as broadcast); however, the law does not define the term.
 The U.S. Supreme Court similarly has had difficulty defining the term. In Miller v. California, the court defers definition to two hypothetical entities, "contemporary community standards" and "hypothetical reasonable persons".
 The courts and the legislature have had similar problems defining the term.
 Arguments have been made that the term "obscenity" is not specifically defined by case law, and thus does not satisfy the Vagueness doctrine, which states that people must clearly be informed as to the prohibited behavior.
 Arguments have been made that determination of what is obscene (offensive) varies, and thus alleged violations of obscenity law are not actionable (actions require a right).
 Critics have argued that no actual injury occurs when a mere preference is violated, so alleged violations of obscenity law are not actionable (actions require an injury).
 Critics have argued that, given its unusual and problematic history, unclear meaning, and the poor reasoning offered by the majorities in Roth and Miller to explain or justify the doctrine, the Supreme Court was simply wrong on the issue and the doctrine should be wholly discarded.

In light of the recent en banc decision of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, as brought by Judge Lancaster in the original US vs. Extreme Associates case, only the US Supreme Court is allowed to revise its earlier decision that established the Miller decision.

The US Supreme Court refused to hear, effectively rejecting, such modification in August 2006 when the same en banc decision by the Third Circuit was sent to the US Supreme Court for review. Thus the open ended conflicting notes above remain in effect for obscenity prosecutions.

Public funding/public places 
Congress passed a law in 1990 that required such organizations such as the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) and National Association of Artists' Organizations (NAAO) to abide by general decency standards for the "diverse beliefs and values of the American public." in order to receive grant money.

In National Endowment for the Arts vs. Karen Finley, the Supreme Court upheld the law, noting that the conditions were acceptable in light of the conditions on funding, rather than being a direct regulation on speech.

Government owned exhibition spaces are available under the Supreme Court's "public forum" doctrine. This doctrine explains that citizens within the United States have access to display in such public places such as lobbies of public buildings, theatrical productions, etc.

Even with this law in place it is hard for artists who have addressed sexually explicit work in work because of complaints which are generally in the form of "inappropriate for children" or seen as a form of "sexual harassment." Therefore, the arts works are removed and at times there are official "no nudity" policies that are put in place.

When these decisions are taken to court on account of free expression, the venues are often looked at to see if they are an actual "designated public forum." If they are, then public officials have violated the First Amendment rights of the individuals. The other side is if the court finds that there is "no designated public forum" in that venue, and thus government officials have the right to exclude and or censor the work.

Additional restrictions on sexual expression 

In the Miller decision the use of the words "contemporary community standards" typically means that the law evolves along with social mores and norms. This has been shown throughout the expansion of the pornography industry along with commercial pornography by people such as amateurs and publishers of personal websites on the World Wide Web. Indirect government control such as restrictive zoning of adult video stores and nude dancing were put in place because general obscenity convictions were harder to come by, but First Amendment case law allows reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions. Similarly a set of rules was put in place in Indiana to control erotic dancing, where legal, so that all dancers must either wear "pasties" or "g-strings" as shown in the 1991 case of Barnes v. Glen Theatre.

State laws 
The laws on pornography are regulated by the state, meaning that there is not a national law for pornography. Many states have restrictions on buying books and magazines of pornography. Between 1995 and 2002, almost half of the states were considering bills to control internet pornography, and more than a quarter of states enacted such laws. In many states, other laws controlling access to pornography exist, such as exposing minors to indecent material. However, the federal courts, in American Bookseller's Association v. Hudnut, have struck down anti-pornography laws as unconstitutional on first-amendment basis, because the restrictions at issue were based on viewpoint, and the state could not demonstrate enough harm to successfully overcome the traditional first-amendment jurisprudence.

Censorship in schools, universities, and libraries 
Schools, universities, and libraries receive government funds for many purposes, and some of these funds go to censorship of obscenity in these institutions. There are a few different ways in which this is done. One way is by not carrying pornographic or what the government deems obscene material in these places; another is for these places to purchase software that filters the internet activity on campus. An example is the federal Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). This mandates that all schools and libraries receiving federal aid for internet connections install a "technology protection measure" (filter) on all computers, whether used by children or adults. There are some states that have passed laws mandating censorship in schools, universities, and libraries even if they are not receiving government aid that would fund censorship in these institutions. These include Arizona, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Twenty more states were considering such legislation in 2001–2002.

Child pornography 

Child pornography refers to images or films (also known as child abuse images) and in some cases outside of the United States, writings depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child; as such, child pornography is a record of child sexual abuse. Abuse of the child occurs during the sexual acts which are recorded in the production of child pornography, and several professors of psychology state that memories of the abuse are maintained as long as visual records exist, are accessed, and are "exploited perversely."

Child pornography is widely considered extremely obscene; however, the Supreme Court case New York v Ferber established that such material does not have to be found legally obscene to be prohibited, and offences relating to child pornography are separate from obscenity.

Censorship of film 
Film censorship in the United States was recognized as constitutional without limits by the 1915 U.S. Supreme Court decision Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Commission of Ohio.  This was overturned by the 1952 decision Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, restricting regulation only to "obscene" films. The 1965 case Freedman v. Maryland ruled that prior restraint of film exhibition without a court order was unconstitutional, leading to the end of most state and local film censorship boards. Current laws which can be enforced after the fact are limited by the definition of "obscene" in the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision Miller v. California.

The voluntary Motion Picture Association film rating system was adopted in 1968, functioning mostly to prevent children of various ages from seeing certain films at participating theaters. This has sometimes lead to self-censorship of certain sexual content among participating filmmakers wishing to avoid an X, R, or PG-13 rating that would restrict the size of the potential audience.

The most notable films given an "X" rating were Deep Throat (1972) and The Devil in Miss Jones (1973). These films show explicit, non-simulated, penetrative sex that was presented as part of a reasonable plot with respectable production values. Some state authorities issued injunctions against such films to protect "local community standards"; in New York the print of Deep Throat was seized mid-run, and the film's exhibitors were found guilty of promoting obscenity. This Film Is Not Yet Rated is a 2006 film which discusses disparities the filmmaker sees in ratings and feedback: between Hollywood and independent films, between homosexual and heterosexual sexual situations, between male and female sexual depictions, and between violence and sexual content. They found that films have also been further censored than their heterosexual, male, white counterparts due to gay sex (even if implied), African American sex, or female pleasure as opposed to male pleasure.

Possession of obscene material
In 1969, the Supreme Court held in Stanley v. Georgia that State laws making mere private possession of obscene material a crime are invalid, at least in the absence of an intention to sell, expose or circulate the material.

See also

 Censorship in the United States
 Indecent exposure in the United States
 Legality of pornography in the United States
 Anti-Obscenity Enforcement Act (Alabama)
 Texas obscenity statute

References

Further reading
  - Written on June 19, 2009; posted June 22 that year

Obscenity law
Sexuality and society
Censorship in the United States