History of censorship - ROSES AND THORNS by Alejandro R. Roces

Almost two years ago, Hilarion M. Henares, Jr. wrote a series of columns on censorship through the ages. He started the series by stating that censorship originally started not to exorcise sex and violence, but to control religious and political views. The initial and most powerful censorship board in all history was the Catholic Church’s Index of Prohibited Books that started in 1557 about a century after Gutenberg’s movable type made books available to the public. The books condemned then are now popular classics — the novels of such authors as Victor Hugo, Balzac, Dumas and Flaubert. They were not considered pornographic. They just did not meet the political norms of the period.

Authors were often forced to change the identity of the characters in their books. Boccacio’s The Decameron was banned because the characters involved in illicit sex were priests and nuns. When he changed it to plain ladies and gentlemen, his books were removed from the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

The very first film movie board censor was the British Board of Film Censors established in 1913 but still in operation to this day. In the United States, censorship was a state matter, but the Catholic Legion of Decency operated nationally.

Actually, the courts were deciding obscenity issues long before censorship came. As far back as 1868, Chief Justice Cockburn in a judgment in Regina vs. Hicklin, said:

"The test of obscenity is this: whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall."

In 1877, Judge Clarke of the Federal District Court of Boston in United States versus Heywood, ruled, "A book is said to be obscene when it is offensive to decency and chastity which is immodest, which is indelicate, impure, causing lewd thoughts of an immoral tendency."

Pope Leo XIII in General Decrees Concerning the Prohibition and Censorship of Books, decreed: "Books which professedly treat of, narrate, or teach lewd or obscene subjects are prohibited. Care must be taken not only of faith but also of morals, which are easily corrupted by the reading of such books."

And in March 31, 1930, the Code to Govern the Making of Motion and Talking Pictures by the Motion Picture Producers and Distribution of America, Inc. declared, "Obscenity in word, gesture, reference, song, joke or by suggestion is forbidden."

This is the question that has become a major issue in our times. Where does artistic liberty end and where does obscenity begin?