Censorship is on the rise, obscenity is being redefined, and if we do not speak up—if we do not fight—we will lose our rights to free speech!

Increasingly, books are being banned from our school libraries, and in many classrooms instructors can no longer teach the facts of American history without fear of reprisal. But there is an even more insidious censorship taking hold in our country right now, and that is self-censorship. The revenge and retribution tactics used by this administration are by now so well-known that politicians and the media keep quiet—they self-censor—rather than incur the wrath of President Trump and what that could mean for their career or business survival.

Universities are exchanging control for federal funds that were heretofore given without strings for education and research, research that benefits all Americans. Paramount just handed Trump $16 million for his future presidential library to resolve a flimsy lawsuit so that Paramount’s business merger would receive federal approval. Neither the suit nor its resolution bore any semblance of justice; it was quid pro quo, tit for tat—whatever the hell you want to call it, it was wrong.

Mike Lee has introduced a bill to replace the Supreme Court’s current definition of obscenity that is very specific and based on “community standards,” or the Miller test.
Instead Lee’s definition of “obscenity” would be so incredibly broad as to include content that “depicts, describes, or represents actual or simulated sexual acts with the objective intent to arouse, titillate, or gratify the sexual desires of a person”—in other words, the magazine you are holding in your hands, the R-rated movie you watched last night, or perhaps, as in World War II, books that are deemed immoral, like the works of Walt Whitman, Helen Keller and Ernest Hemingway. You see, free speech has never come freely. We must all stand tall to be heard!

For more on the national fight to protect our rights, please turn to page 64 for HUSTLER’s compelling interview with Ben Wizner, the head of ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

Liz Flynt
Publisher

(Photo licensed through Vecteezy)