John S. Sumner

John Saxton Sumner (September 22, 1876 - June 20, 1971) was an American anti-vice activist who headed the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV), a New York state censorship body empowered to recommend obscenity cases to the appropriate prosecutors.

[1] Sumner retired in 1950; the organization, by then named the Society to Maintain Public Decency, was disbanded shortly thereafter.

[5][6] He arranged for both civil and criminal libel actions to be brought against critics who ridiculed him or the society in print.

[7][8] At times, Sumner veered from his central mission of policing obscenity to attack general values of which he disapproved.

The obscenity issue is only a smokescreen, hiding an effort to prevent the publication of ideas which are unpleasant to various church groups and to ultra-conservatives.