Many people opposed to censorship often have difficulty understanding the moral crusaders who choose to become self-appointed custodians of public morality. One can understand any person choosing certain moral codes to govern their own lives but what motivates them to force their moral codes onto others?. Perhaps the following analysis of anti-vice crusader, Anthony Comstock, penned by Harvey O’Higgins and Edward Reede (in their book, The American Mind), sheds some much needed light on the motivations of other crusaders, even those in Australia.

"The Puritan lived in a state of war with his instinctive self, which he regarded as his evil self tempting him to live according to the law of the flesh when he wished to live according to the Pauline law of God. He hated the flesh in himself and he hated even more fiercely that flesh appearing as the vices of others. Hence he was a great persecutor, a strong vice-crusader, the best witch hunter... It is useless to tell such a man to love his neighbour as himself; he hates so much of himself. His hate, reservoired within him, gets its drainage in raids on vice, in the prosecutions and suppressions carried on by anti-vice societies, and in the campaigns of reform that call for the punishment of evil-doers."

Keith Wright

Former Labor MP and Baptist lay preacher, Keith Wright, was a strong moral campaigner -- deeply religious, opposed to pornography and a vehement defender of children and their need for protection. As it turned out, children would need protecting from Wright, the former Queensland state Opposition leader and member for the federal seat of Capricornia, with a sexual bent towards adolescent girls. Wright was arrested, tried by jury and found guilty of one count of rape, one count of indecently dealing with a girl under 14, and four counts of indecently dealing with a girl under 16. His victim had been aged 13 when the abuse, which occurring between 1983 and 1985, first began. At the age of 16, when the girl involved tried to break off their relationship, Wright, refusing to take no for an answer, raped her in her own bedroom. Wright received an eight year jail sentence for these crimes in 1993 then, a year later, his sentenced was increased by 12 months after a second trial for more sex offences. In the second trial, involving another victim -- an 11-year-old girl when Wright began molesting her -- he was found guilty of one count of indecent and unlawfully dealing with a girl aged under 14, between 1984 and 1986, and two counts of indecent dealing with the same girl in 1989 and 1990. Wright was eventually paroled on 11 June 1999, after serving only five years of his sentence, and has now launched a new phonetics-based 4S literacy program for children on the Gold Coast. Wright has said that promoting his literacy package is a chance for him to "contribute to the community".

Pastor Howard Carter

Baptist minister Pastor Howard Carter was the executive director and founder of the Covenant Evangelical Church’s political and educational arm, the Logos Foundation. The foundation had originally been founded in 1966, in New Zealand, but when Carter moved to Sydney three years later -- joining the fundamentalist Christian Faith Centre and later founding the Covenant Evangelical Church -- Logos moved with him. In 1988, Logos headquarters moved to Toowoomba, a more fertile ground for the emerging New Right church. Originally welcomed to this part of Australia, the established churches turned their back on Logos when the foundation ran a $100,000 campaign during the 1989 state election, arguing that moral issues like pornography, capital punishment, homosexuality and abortion were more important than political corruption. Purporting that his church had two basic commitments, Carter told Toowoomba’s Chronicle newspaper that year that "one is a profound and personal commitment to Jesus Christ, the other is to family." However, even as he uttered those words, Carter was secretly committing adultery, a cardinal sin in the eyes of Logos, with a female member of the congregation. Carter was soon forced to resign his position in disgrace after being confronted by church elders. Carter’s actions eventually led to the demise of Logos, its properties sold for reputed several million dollars, some of the money used to set up a new organisation known as NCV.

US Evangelist Preacher Jimmy Swaggart

Well known American evangelist and ardent anti-vice crusader, Jimmy Swaggart was born in Ferriday, Louisiana, and grew up in a small town where his uncle paid for the construction of an Assemblies of God church, the largest Pentecostal denomination in the US. Both his parents were evangelists and his grandmother constantly studied the Bible. It was only natural that Swaggart too would become an evangelist and began preaching on street corners. Eventually Swaggart’s preaching crusades would encompass the US and many other countries. In 1973, Swaggart began using video as his primary medium and, within 10 years, had become the most popular television preacher in the US with some 200 stations sending his message into 2 million households. In 1987, Swaggart was instrumental in publicizing the scandal that brought about the downfall of fellow television preachers Jim and Tammy Bakker but, a year later, he too was forced to resign his position after a fellow preacher showed photographs of Swaggart with a New Orleans prostitute. Swaggart gave a tearful confession at the time, admitting to an unspecified sin, but refused to bow to church discipline and resumed his ministry. However, three years later, Swaggart was caught again with another prostitute in his car in Indio, California. Swaggart has remained entrenched in his religion and continues to fund raise compulsively, attempting to resurrect his lost outreach to souls by means of FM radio and the Internet.

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