Preview the new video D.M. Bennett: The Truth Seeker

This new one-hour HD (High Definition) video chronicles the life of D.M. Bennett, the nineteenth century's most controversial publisher and American free-speech martyr. Produced by Roderick Bradford in association with Inquiry Media Productions (2009). D.M. Bennett (1818-1882) challenged the Comstock Law, named after Anthony Comstock, the chief vice-hunter and crusading moralist for the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, a Christian sponsored organization that promoted social purity. A religious fanatic, Comstock targeted freethinking liberals and bragged of driving fifteen persons to suicide. Bennett was convicted for defiantly selling the "obscene" free-love pamphlet Cupid's Yokes. While Bennett awaited transfer to the Albany Penitentiary to serve out his 13-month prison sentence at hard labor, his fellow freethinker and Vice President of the National Liberal League (devoted to complete separation of church and state), Robert Ingersoll - "The Great Agnostic" - worked tirelessly to seek a presidential pardon for the elderly publisher of the "blasphemous" New York City periodical The Truth Seeker. The video will be released shortly. Production funded by a grant from the James Hervey Johnson Charitable Educational Trust.