In the 1870s, firebrand activist Annie Besant and her friend Charles Bradlaugh made the risky decision to republish an American book called The Fruits of Philosophy , which includes frank discussions of sexual intimacy and rudimentary birth-control methods, in Britain. The two were prosecuted on charges of obscenity. In this wittily incisive essay, Besant applies the extremely broad criteria used to judge that work as obscene to the Bible.