Marilyn C. Mazur and Joan E. Bertin

About the author: Marilyn C. Mazur is an attorney for the National Coalition Against Censorship; Joan E. Bertin is the executive director of the NCAC.

Censors are too quick to prevent children from seeing nudity or expressions of sexuality, even when the material has artistic or educational merit. Efforts to determine what is "harmful to minors" have been part of the American tradition since the nineteenth century, but it may be time to decide whether it is constitutional or wise to deny minors access to these materials. Censors treat all nudity as obscene, despite the fact that nudity in art is often neither erotic nor offensive. Such censorship is frequently ludicrous and could lead to restrictions on scholarly writing. We are working up a fever making new...