Anthony Comstock might be the most significant American that it's entirely possible you've never heard of. A zealous Christian crusader against so-called "obscenity" in the late 19th century, he is the namesake of the Comstock Act, the interstate commerce law that the Heritage Foundation plans to use to curb access to abortion pills and pornography.

Born in Connecticut in the mid-1800s, Anthony Comstock grew up with regressive Victorian ideals in a puritanical New England household. His self-loathing and religious zeal lead to a life of bullying and persecuting countless men and (more often) women, driving many to suicide and tallying up hundreds of years in prison sentences.

The radical social dynamics at the time in many ways echo our current culture wars, and since Anthony Comstock is about to play a major role in American life again, we thought it would be useful to talk a bit about his life and times.

Much of the information for this episode was drawn from Amy Sohn's book The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship, and Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age

Also helpful were the biography of Comstock from the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum

and TheFire.org's Why the 1873 Comstock Act still matters today