Anthony Comstock, Mutton-Chopped Mastodon of Morality

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The Chambers siblings return from summer break to take a buzzsaw to the memory of Anthony Comstock. He was a self-appointed moral crusader and postal inspector from the 19th century whose legacy lingers in modern politics—including references in Project 2025 to ban mailing abortion medications, contraception, and pornography.

Learn how one boy's mommy issues are inflicted on an entire nation as Comstock's Connecticut Puritan upbringing sends him on a mission to hunt mad dogs, go full Batman on an illegal saloon, and makes him the least popular soldier in the Civil War. His obsessive, self-critical journaling offers a window into his world of shame and personal struggles with one-handed temptation. (Ahem.)

It's another awful person telling everyone else how to live! Join Jamie and Bambi while they wonder aloud why Comstock's laws and moralizing mission should have any relevance in the 21st century.

In this episode we encourage you to consider a donation to Planned Parenthood, which provides education and support services for sexual and gender related health. Learn all the ways they assist men, women and families at www.plannedparenthood.org.

Sources

• “Comstockery” in Merriam-Webster Dictionary

• Project 2025

• “Project 2025’s Distortion of a Reconstruction-Era Law Could Enact a National Abortion Ban”

• “Anthony Comstock Rides Again”

• The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship, and Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age by Amy Sohn (2021)

• “Anthony Comstock's Moral Crusade,” Part 5 of Banned Books, Burned Books: Forbidden Literary Works. The Great Courses. Lecture by Maureen Corrigan, PhD

• Anthony Comstock, Roundsman of the Lord by H. Broun and M. Leech (1927).

• The American Mind In Action by Harvey Jerrold O'Higgins, Edward Hiram Reede (1924)

• Comstock, Fighter by Charles Gallaudet Trumbull (1913)