Taking laws against prostitution, obscenity, alcohol, etc into account, plus general levels of censorship. which US state is the most rigid and puritanical?
(I’m not sure whether to say ‘excepting Utah’ here, which, as a sort of theocracy, might be expected to be puritanic.)
I like the question, but it will have to be moved to GD. There’s no factual answer.
I’m not sure your categories are quite right–you won’t find much variation in laws on prostitution or “general censorship”. Laws on censorship (usually of pornography) are constrained by SCOTUS decisions, and prostitution is illegal everywhere except for a few counties in Nevada. You do find a lot of variation in laws on alcohol, gambling, and “sodomy”–those might be good markers for puritanism. I would definitely nominate Utah–no legal gambling of any kind, and lots of weird restrictions on liquor sales. But I don’t agree that it’s a “theocracy”.
Your answer may lie in the Census info if you take the state with the most % church-goers to its population.
My WAG would be a state in the south - Texas or N.C. -
Otherwise - it’d be Utah.
‘Religious’ does not equal ‘puritanical.’ Plenty of us church-goers would happily tell John Ashcroft to keep his nose (and other body parts) out of other people’s business. My vote would certainly go to Utah, although some of those Deep South states are pretty uptight when it comes to sexuality.
I don’t think the nebulous definition of “puritanical” permits a factual answer to this question, so I’ll move this thread to Great Debates.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
Utah. Gotta be.
Actually, a lot of our states are pretty freakin’ big, and different parts of each state have different personalities. Even different parts of cities. Within a mile in Brooklyn you’ll find the clubs of Williamsburg and the highly conservative Hasidims of Crown Heights. Texas has churches big enough to hold like, 5000 people, and at the same time a strong Western ethic of tolerance. And the states settled by Purtians originally are now among the most liberal in the country. (Puritanism evolved into Congregationalism or something, right?)
And even though it contradicts the previous sentence, thanks, ** Diceman**, for pointing out that religious affiliation!=puritanical. My best friend is a Unitarian-Universalist, very active in her church–does she count? And I do hope we don’t forget that while the Puritans were Christians, many of the strictest-living people you’ll find here aren’t.
I’d also say that it’s not the laws alone that count, but if and how they’re enforced. There may be all sorts of dusty old laws lingering in the books that haven’t been removed because the state is so liberal they haven’t been challenged in fifty years, and nobody cares enough to pass legislation to remove them.
How about some southern states that still have “dry” counties. Also, until 1966, condoms for birth control were illegal in Conn. Oh, lastly, the US Sup Ct in Bowers v Hardwick(no joke)-1986- upheld Georgia’s anti-sodomy law. It is now being contested in another state-Texas?
I’ll put in an early vote for Ohio, primarily because Cincinnati is located in it (though it’s right on the border with Kentucky).
Cincinnati is also known as Censornati, because it has been the point of origin of so many censorship movements, primarity Catholic in origin.
Here’s a link confirming Censornati’s “name recognition” though the full article will cost $2.50 to read. I didn’t.
http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/from_redirect/0,10987,1101980420-138989,00.html
Censornati was where the attempt to censor the work of Robert Mapplethorpe was made. It was where Larry Flynt was convicted of organized crime in what was clearly a set of trumped-up charges (here’s a cite)
http://www.cincypost.com/living/1999/flynt112299.html
It was also the origin of Charles Keating’s Citizens for Decent Literature, a pro-censorship group that was responsible getting Keating recognized as SUCH a wonderful, moral man (he was put in charge of an S&L and ran it so crookedly that he was the only man convicted in the savings and loan debacle of the 80s).
A speech by Nadine Strossen, president of the ACLU and author of Defending Pornography, sums it up nicely:
http://www.citybeat.com/archives/1998/issue418/newsarticle1.html
So I think it’s going to be REALLY hard to beat Ohio here.
That said, geography isn’t the key to censorship, it’s religion. The Catholic Church has their thumbprints all over just about every censorship movement going. Geography is a minor point in comparison. Still, if someone could see their way to nuke Censornati, I’m sure the world would be a better place all told.
How do the states get way with censoring literature? I understand that movies have no First Amendment protection, but surely literature is covered by it? Can the First Amendment easily be set aside by the courts on the grounds that something is considered obscene, in bad taste, whatever?
And what about painting and sculpture? Are these protected under the First Amendment?
I’ve always envied the US its constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech, but I’m beginning to wonder; if it can so easily be finessed by courts, what’s the point?
Um, what about Texas’s sodomy laws which are now being challenged?
What makes you think that movies have no First Amendment protections?
You can’t pass any laws in Cincinnati which prohibit discrimation against gay people.
Which is why I left. 
My error, papermache prince.
I’d read about the 1915 Supreme Court ruling denying motion pictures were protected by the First Amendment, and was unaware that …
1952 Burstyn v. Wilson Artistic freedom triumphed when the Court
overruled its 1915 holding that movies “are a business, pure and
simple,” and decided that New York State’s refusal to license “The
Miracle” violated the First Amendment. The state censor had labeled the film “sacrilegious.”
The First Amendment protects all forms of artistic expression–books, paintings, sculptures, movies, performance art. However, that protection is not absolute. Courts have allowed cities and states to regulate obscenity in various ways usually falling short of an outright ban. The state of law on this issue defies synopsis; see here for an introduction.
Ah, yes, Cincinnati.
Or, as it’s rapidly becoming, “1950’s Birmingham”.
aldi-the most recent US SCt case that dealt w/ obscenity & described basically what was & was not free speech was Miller v. Cal -1973. A bit of a a refinement of the prior " no redeeming value test." Rather than rely on my memory, better to read the case ,which I KNOW da man will find in a heartbeat.
**Ah, yes, Cincinnati.
Or, as it’s rapidly becoming, “1950’s Birmingham”.**
Ah yes, Birmingham, where the intercity has deterioated because of yankee folks getting in the way of the love affair between southern white folks and black.
Alabama is without question the most puritanical of all american states. Oh yeah, Mississippi likes to claim their moral superiorty, but let them try to explain their forty- two “dry counties” that are as legally dry as a well attended baby’s butt. But, somehow, beer spills can be found on their dirt-room beer joint floors.
Vote Rubin. Vote Alabama.
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G-the sodomy case(Texas, I think, concerns homosexual sodomy)
The US SCt said in 1986 that states can make it a crime if they want to. Now the issue has arisen again, & the court has agreed to hear it again.
