Of Condoms and Comstock

Susan Lumiere

    I guess it’s no longer chic to wear a Sheik. It looks like they’re no longer being produced, but get this: In 1883, Julius Schmid, a German-Jewish immigrant, founded his condom-making company after buying a sausage-casing business! This is too funny to be believed. I wonder if he manufactured different prophylactics for circumcised and uncircumcised sausages. He named them Ramses and Sheik, and there was another company whose condoms were called Sphinx. (Could this have been an early campaign to prevent the proliferation of A-rabs?—no doubt a Jewish conspiracy!)

    Around the same time that the condom was being legalized, rubber latex was invented; and Trojans and other condoms became much thinner and more pleasurable to wear.
 Condoms became popular during WWII, when Uncle Sam distributed them to his “nephews,” GI’s serving overseas. Condom wrappers had exotic names, such as Mimosa, Blondtex (with a blonde on the cover,) Odalisca, and Salome.
   Condoms were available until 1873, when Anthony Comstock, a self-righteous, vindictive US Postal Inspector, got Congress to pass the Comstock Act. Designed to prohibit obscene literature and pornography, it became a misdemeanor to have or sell any form of contraception, punishable by a minimum of six months in jail. Comstock had been appalled by the profanity and sexual activity of soldiers and women during his service in the Civil War and resolved to stamp out all forms of lasciviousness.
   Originally able to prosecute people for sending questionable materials through the mail, his power extended far beyond the post office. (It was probably illegal to even play “post office” at that time.)
   He was vehemently against anything which offended his Victorian morality, including suffrage, gambling, prostitution, abortion, birth control and prevention of venereal disease. He made trouble for anarchist Emma Goldman and birth control crusader Margaret Sanger. He threw into jail the attractive Victoria Woodhull, the first female presidential candidate, who ran for office in 1872 and then ran away to England, thanks to Comstock.
   A man was arrested for sending a letter to his wife that mentioned birth control. It was illegal to send anatomy books to medical students through the mail. Ida Craddock, who wrote about women’s rights, free speech, and sexuality, was imprisoned and committed suicide at age 45, as did Madame Restell, arrested for performing abortions. When entrapping Restell, Comstock posed as a customer wanting birth control and arrested her upon receiving it.
   Comstock bragged that he was responsible for 4000 arrests and at least 15 suicides. He had many enemies, of course; and his health declined after suffering a severe blow to the head by an attacker. Before he died, Comstock attracted a young law student, one J. Edgar Hoover, the gay, cross-dressing future FBI director who made so many lives unbearable, including that of MLK, Jr. (Honestly, can you picture bulldog-faced — sorry, doggies—J. Edgar Vacuum Cleaner arrayed in a pink lace peignoir with matching fluffy boa and satin pumps?) WWCD? What would Comstock do, if he knew that his protege was a flaming pervert? (I’ve never been against gays or transvestites at all. Au contraire. I use the word pervert only because Hoover viciously and hypocritically blackmailed, threatened, and persecuted others for far lesser “crimes” than being gay.)
    By now you’re probably wondering how our old buddy, Julius Schmid, the Sheik freak, survived during the shutting down of the flourishing condom industry. Despite a police raid on his home, Schmid managed to stay afloat and thrive, selling his products on the black market. (That doesn’t mean he sold them only to blacks, even though Black Wives Matter.)
    Thanks to the evil machinations of Comstock and his ilk, sexually transmitted diseases rose so precipitously that 18,000 US soldiers a day couldn’t report for duty during WWI. Over a two year period, 380,000 cases of VD were diagnosed, costing the government over $50 million in treatment and untold misery to millions.
    There was an ineffective “Dough Boy” kit that the military handed out to the soldiers, involving cleansing after the fact, like shutting the barn door after the horse escapes.
Somehow I doubt that these Pillsbury privates said, “Woo hoo,” while sanitizing their privates. 
    The US was the only Allied force that didn’t provide its soldiers with condoms, but our men learned about them from others while abroad. In 1918 our government finally decriminalized condom usage. The US Pubic (misspelling intentional) Health Department and US military actively campaigned for prevention, and this gradually led to sex education in our schools. Posters advertising protection abounded, even one showing Donald Duck with a sexy blonde bombshell lamenting that he was without a “pro”—phylactic.
    I gleaned most of the information for this (cod)piece from a biographical sketch of A. Comstock and an article that appeared in “Collector’s Weekly,” called, “Getting It On, the Covert History of the American Condom.” There is a companion article called “Slut-Shaming, Eugenics, and Donald Duck: The Scandalous History of Sex-Ed Movies.” Now that definitely sounds like something I could have written, and I encourage you to see it for yourself.