“Possibly the most important change that has improved the chances of obtaining honesty and efficiency in government was the extension of civil rights after the defeat of the Neo-Puritans. You will recall the new constitutional principle that forbade the state to pass laws forbidding citizens to commit acts which did not in fact damage other citizens. Well, that meant the end of the blue laws, and a grisly unconscious symbiosis between the underworld and the organized churches—for the greatest bulwark of the underworld were always the moral creeds of the churches. You still think that unlikely? Consider this: The churches had great political power. It was almost impossible to be elected to office if the churches disapproved. It is a matter of fact, easily checked, that every public leader of every corrupt political machine was invariably a prominent member of a large, powerful sect. He always contributed heavily to the church, especially to its charities. On the other hand every church stood publicly for honesty in government. At the same time they demanded of the government that there be suppressed all manner of acts, harmless in themselves, but offensive to the creeds of the churches. Churches and the clergy were usually willing to accept the word for the deed. Protestations of integrity, combined with tithing and psalm singing, plus a willingness to enact into law the prejudices of the churches, were usually all that the churches required of a candidate. On the other hand the gang leaders were hardened realists. They cared nothing about a candidate’s appearance of pious virtue if he could be depended on to protect from prosecution the gang that supported him. Furthermore they were anxious to have blue laws on the books as long as they were not enforced. Illicitness was the thing that made most of their stock in trade valuable, and they knew it. Where in your 1930’s was there a gang leader who urged repeal of the eighteenth amendment? The very blue laws they broke gave them a weapon to destroy competition, for the same machine which gave them protection could be used to destroy an enemy who did not own a piece of the local government. And so it went for years, in every large American city, the gangsters and the preachers, each for his own purpose, supported and elected the same candidates. It was inevitable, because the churches demanded of government things that government cannot or should not perform—things that come under the head of making a man be ‘good’ for the good of his soul, instead of interfering only to prevent him damaging another. The churches had a thousand rationalizations to prove that their nosey-parker interference was necessary for the welfare of all.
“For example, Brown must be stopped from peddling pornography, because, if he does, he will harm the purchaser, Smith. But note that Smith is to be Saved from harm for the good of Smith’s soul, as defined by the churches. Sometimes the concatenation is very involved, but in every case you will find at the end the churches attempting to use the state to coerce the citizen into complying with a creed which the churches have been unsuccessful in persuading the citizen to accept without coercion. Wherever that occurs you have a condition which inevitably results in the breeding of a powerful underworld which will seize the local government, and frequently, through control of local political machines, seize state and national governments as well.
“One is always asked, ‘What about the sweet innocent children? Are they to have no protection?’ Certainly not, but many of the things which were believed to be bad for children were bad only in the unventilated minds of the religious moralists. For example, we now realize that it is not bad for children to be used to naked human bodies—on the contrary it is very unhealthy for them not to be. We know that knowledge of the objective fact of bisexual procreation is not harmful to children—on the contrary if we satisfy their natural curiosity by telling them lies, we are building trouble for the future. But we do know that nicotine and alcohol do more physical harm to children than to adults and we punish the adult who provides them with such. By the same token we look with disfavor on a church which fills children’s minds with sadistic tales of a cruel vengeful tribe of barbarians under the guise of teaching them the revealed word of God. We disapprove of exhibiting pictures and statues of a man spiked to a wooden frame. I say we disapprove—but we do not forbid, for the damage, though probably greater than habit-forming drugs, is hard to prove, but we do insist on some years of instruction through the public development centers to clean their minds of the sadism, phobias, simple misstatements of fact, faulty identifications, and confusion of abstractions that their preachers and priests have labored to instill.”