Lewd? Really?

Back in the old days a man could get arrested for receiving a picture like this in the mail. It happened to respected literary critic  Newton Arvin. Police raided his home, his career was ruined, and he was hospitalized for suicidal thoughts. He was charged with being a lewd person,and for receiving through the mails magazines containing pictures of semi-nude men. He also admitted to displaying the photographs at his apartment - and swapping them with others.  A book about the whole affair came out in  2001. I read it so I know that the pictures in those magazines were not significantly different from this shot of male dancers, taken in the early 1930s at Jacob’s Pillow. Who could be offended, right?Now  scroll down to this next photo taken of the dance troupe I saw perform at Jacob's Pillow yesterday. The semi-nude human form just doesn’t cause the kind of reaction it once did and thank heaven for that!

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