U.S. versus Married Love . . . . Really?
No, the federal government did not have an official position opposing love in marriage. But U.S. Customs did ban the book, Married Love, by English birth control pioneer Dr. Marie Stopes. In United States v. One Obscene Book Entitled “Married Love,” New York Federal Judge John M. Woolsey overturned the ban on this day.
First published in England in 1918, Married Love had been printed in 19 editions by 1931, which was an indicator of the public hunger for reliable information about sexuality at that time. Judge Woolsey also famously overturned the Customs ban on James Joyce’s Ulysses on December 6. 1933.
In the period from the late 1920s through the mid-1930s there were a number of important lower court cases ending censorship over information about sex in marriage (the Married Love case), information about birth control (the Contraception case), sex education for children (the Dennett case), the importation of contraceptive devices (the Japanese diaphragms case), and explicit treatment of sexuality in novels (the Ulysses case). These cases set the stage for a broader civil liberties attack on censorship and restrictions on birth control in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Dr. Marie Stopes opened the first birth control clinic in England on March 17, 1921, and on July 18, 1931, three months after the decision on this day regarding Married Love, a District Court judge ruled that her book Contraception was not obscene,
Read the book: Marie Stopes, Married Love (1918)
Learn more about Stopes: Ruth E. Hall, Passionate Crusader: The Life of Marie Stopes (1977)
Visit the web site of Marie Stopes International: http://www.mariestopes.org.uk/