Radio -shock jocks, - Super Bowl entertainment, music videos, and internet spam--all of these topics inspire passionate disagreements about whether and how to regulate sexually explicit material. But even in the midst of heated debate, most people agree that children should be shielded from exposure to pornographic images. Why are children the focal point of debates over sexually explicit material? And how did a culture rooted in Puritanism and Victorianism become saturated with sex?

In Against Obscenity, Leigh Ann Wheeler offers new answers to these questions through a study...