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If you dont live under a dictatorship, you expect to have certain rights and freedoms: to enjoy a Western Bacon Cheeseburger during any of Carls Jr.s posted business hours, to sing along to Chappell Roan as loud as you want in your own home and to express yourself however you want, as long as youre not hurting anybody (probably with Chappell Roan lyrics).

Still, supposedly free countries have ruled against artists rights to free speech, free song, free painting, etc.

When rapper BG was released from prison on weapons charges in 2023, one of the conditions of his parole was the submission of any song he intended to record or perform to the government to make sure it wasnt inconsistent with the goals of rehabilitation. Specifically, hesnot allowed to glorify gang life or violence, soooo hes supposed to just get a new job or something. His lawyers are challenging the requirements on First Amendment grounds, but they totally arrested him for performing such songs with Boosie and Gucci Mane, so yes, apparently, they can do that.

In 1989, 2 Live Crew released the albumAs Nasty As They Wanna Be, whose cover featured four nearly naked pairs of womens butts and whose contents upheld this thematic tone. There were probably 12 albums on the shelf just like it this was the 1980s, after all but a Florida judge declared the album obscene, and the group was arrested for performing the songs in a Broward County strip club. Yes, the boob store was deemed an inappropriate place for lyrics about boobs. They were eventually acquitted, but not before dealing with the only reason theyre known today.

Today,The Well of Loneliness would be considered a fairly standard historical romance whose love interests happen to be two women, but it was a pretty big deal in 1928. After it was declared obscene by the British government, author Radclyffe Hall rallied her famous friends to defend the books literary merit, butthey mostly noped out on her. Virginia Woolf herself wrote that she was relieved such a defense wouldnt be permitted because she thought the book kind of sucked. Hall had more luck getting the book published in America, where she gained famous supporters like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who Virginia Woolf also thought kind of sucked.

Naked people rubbing butts has been the most popular subject in art for as long as art has been made, but cave paintings be damned, you couldnt do it in 1966 England. Thats where Stass Paraskos wascharged with lewd and obscene conduct for a Leeds museum exhibit that depicted cartoonish figures in various states of sexy times. He became the last artist successfully prosecuted under those particular laws, but he did have to pay 25 pounds for the trouble, which was probably an artists entire annual income back then.

WhenThe Little Review began publishing James JoycesUlysses in serial form in 1918, the U.S. Post Office responded byburning every copy of the magazine featuring the story that entered the country. You might be thinking, Well, hey, its a little confusing, but its notthat bad, but the issue wasnt quality. In particular, a scene in which protagonist Leopold Bloom masturbates while a young woman exposes herself to him got its publishers arrested and eventually convicted on the grounds that the story could deprave and corrupt young minds.

The novel wasnt published in the U.S. again until 1933, when it was unbanned as a result of theUnited States v. One Book Called Ulysses. We really dont name our court cases sassily enough anymore.

Read the original:
5 Times the Courts Chose Censorship - Cracked.com