Mr. President, Pardon the Truth Seeker

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) filed a petition calling on Pres. Joe Biden to posthumously pardon D.M. Bennett, one of the Comstock Act’s most prominent victims.  Hopefully, we will do this before leaving office.

Never heard of Bennett?  Born DeRobigne Mortimer Bennet (1818-1882), in 1873 he founder of The Truth Seeker, a publication he edited until his death.  During its hey-day this weekly publication had 50,000 readers, including Mark Twain, Clarence Darrow and Robert Ingersoll, a leading civil-liberties attorney. Most remarkable, it is still being published.

As a young man, Bennett was a Shaker (i.e., United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing), a millenarian restorationist Christian sect, for 13 years and worked as an herbalist, physician and ministry.  After becoming a “freethinker,” he left the Shakers and owned drugstores and successfully marketed “Dr. Bennett’s Family Medicines.”

In 1873, he reported got into debates with local clergymen in Paris, IL, over the fruitfulness of prayer. He wrote a series of letters to local newspapers, but they refused to print them.  In reaction, he founded The Truth Seeker: Science, Morals, Freethought and Human Happiness declaring, “We embrace, as in one brotherhood, Liberals, Free Religionists, Rationalists, Spiritualists, Unitarians, Friends, Infidels, Freethinkers and in short all who care to think and judge for themselves.”

Bennett published articles debunking the Bible and backing Darwin’s theories; supported women’s rights and birth control; backed taxing church properties and opposed dogmatic religion; and often exposed hypocritical clergymen. According to Bennett’s biographer, Roderick Bradford, “He was the first editor in America — perhaps the world — who routinely wrote exposés on the misdeeds of clergymen, eventually publishing them in a compilation titled Sinful Saints and Sensual Shepherds.”

In 1873, the Christian morality movement was strong enough to have the U.S. Congress enact what became popularly known as the Comstock Act, named after the moralist, Anthony Comstock.  The legislation stands as the most sweeping, omnibus anti-obscenity law in American history.

In 1876, Ezra Heywood published Cupid’s Yokes with a subtitle that reads,

“The Binding Forces of Conjugal Life: An Essay to Consider Some Moral and Physiological Phases of Love and Marriage, Wherein Is Asserted the Natural Right and Necessity of Sexual Self-Government.”In this 23-page pamphlet, Heywood challenged the institution of marriage, arguing that marriage is a social contract that makes a woman into a “prostitute for life.” He proposed that “free love” would foster more equality amongst the men and women. Going further, he proposed that “free love” would change sexuality from a passion to something under the control of reason.

In 1877, Comstock arrested Heywood for publishing Cupid’s Yokes, an allegedly “obscene” work, and although Heywood was tried and convicted, Pres. Rutherford B. Hayes intervened and pardoning him in 1878. After his pardon, Heywood continued to challenge conventional moral standards.

That same year, Comstock went after Bennett, arresting him for selling “An Open Letter to Jesus Christ” and the scientific treatise, “How Do Marsupials Propagate Their Kind?”  As Comstock insisted, “He [Bennett]is everything vile in Blasphemy & Infidelism.”  He added, “His [Bennett’s] idea of liberty is to do and say as he pleases without regard to the rights, morals or liberties of others.” The charges against Bennet were withdrawn.

In 1878, Bennett — along Josephine Tilton, a labor reformer and Heywood’s sister-in-law and another person – were arrested while attending the New York State Freethinkers’ convention at Watkins Glen for selling Cupid’s Yokes. Bennett believed that Comstock had local authorities arrest him and the case was eventually dropped.  Bennett was supported by convention attendees, including Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

In December 1878, Bennett was arrested for mailing Cupid’s Yokes to Comstock (using a false name and address). On March 21, 1879, Bennett was found guilty, fined $300 [$9,422 in 2024 dollars] and sentenced to 13 months of hard labor at Albany Penitentiary, one of the country’s harshest prisons.  Following his release from prison, Bennett’s supporters held a reception for their hero at the elegant Chickering Hall at 130 Fifth Avenue.  He died shortly after his release.

So, Pres. Biden, it’s time to pardon D. M. Bennett, a true truth seeker.

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