> In the eighteenth century, bookstores in the American
colonies carried an extraordinary array of erotica, ranging from
Boccaccio’s Decameron to such explicitly sexual works as Venus
in the Cloister, The Politick Whore, and Letters of an Italian Nun
and an English Gentleman, and there were no statutes forbidding
obscenity during the entire colonial era. To the contrary,
throughout this period, the distribution, exhibition, and
possession of pornographic material was simply not thought to
be any of the state’s business.
> The first obscenity prosecution in the United States did
not occur until 1815, at the height of the evangelical explosion
of the Second Great Awakening, which triggered a nationwide
effort to transform American law and politics through the lens
of evangelical Christianity.
> In the eighteenth century, bookstores in the American colonies carried an extraordinary array of erotica, ranging from Boccaccio’s Decameron to such explicitly sexual works as Venus in the Cloister, The Politick Whore, and Letters of an Italian Nun and an English Gentleman, and there were no statutes forbidding obscenity during the entire colonial era. To the contrary, throughout this period, the distribution, exhibition, and possession of pornographic material was simply not thought to be any of the state’s business.
> The first obscenity prosecution in the United States did not occur until 1815, at the height of the evangelical explosion of the Second Great Awakening, which triggered a nationwide effort to transform American law and politics through the lens of evangelical Christianity.
Benjamin Franklin would've loved Pornhub.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advice_to_a_Friend_on_Choosing...