On this day in ...... 1803, Flore-Celestine-Therèse-Henriette Tristan-Moscoso was born in Paris, France. A member of the working-class, she worked in a print shop as a girl. Eventually she became active in workers' rights causes, the the death-penalty abolition movement, and in the feminist movement, arguing for divorce and against gender constraints." Writing under the pen name Flora Tristan (left), she produced a variety of works -- "travel memoirs, a utopian novel, and assorted social commentary." Today the woman who died at age 41 (4 years before her daughter gave birth to Tristan's grandson, who would become the renowned painter Paul Gauguin) is
recognized as a thinker whose works bridged the gap between 'utopian' and 'scientific' socialism and helped lay the foundations for modern feminist theory.
... 1969 (40 years ago today), in Stanley v. Georgia, the Supreme Court held unanimously that the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbids a state from subjecting a person who possesses of obscene materials within the home to criminal prosecution and punishment. The Opinion of the Court by Justice Thurgood Marshall contained this oft-quoted passage:
Whatever may be the justifications for other statutes regulatingobscenity, we do not think they reach into the privacy of one's own home. If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.
The ruling did not disturb precedent that permitted the distribution or sale of obscenity -- leaving all to puzzle by what legal path such materials might find their way into anyone's home.
(Prior April 7 posts are here and here.)
