Morality Clauses

 I am far, far beyond getting much of anything done here. The after effects of the sinus infection that knocked me out last week is to be tired. That is why it took me several days to finish reading E. Lily Yu's A History of Morality Clauses (Quillette). Fascinating. I am, however, old-fashioned in my attachment to free speech - for all that the First Amendment protects against only government interference - as an antidote to a stifling and infantilizing moralism, I agree with the writer's conclusion:

 The answer to Comstock, the answer to McCarthy, and the answer to their modern-day descendants is the same as it always is: courage, discernment, and laughter. The writer should speak and write fearlessly in spite of morality clauses; agents should strike those clauses out of contracts; the publisher should neither bow to the mob nor force the writer to bow to it; and each individual should bear the responsibility of being an individual and stand apart from the howling mob. Laugh as well, Doris Lessing advises in Prisons We Choose to Live Inside, because laughter is a heretical act. Naked emperors waddling about are, after all, absurd, and so is our determination to repeat the 1910s. These tasks are as hard as they ever were, but we are not spared by our failure to carry them out. 

If a work offends your sense of morals, then you are free to refuse it into your life. That  does not mean you are free to impose on my sense of morals. Whatever immorality I indulge in will be judged by my conscience and my God.

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