Sex, Sin, and Blasphemy: A Guide to America's Censorship Wars is a non-fiction book by lawyer and civil libertarian Marjorie Heins that is about freedom of speech and the censorship of works of art in the early 1990s by the U.S. government. The book was published in 1993 by The New Press. Heins provides an overview of the history of censorship, including the 1873 Comstock laws, and then moves on to more topical case studies of attempts at suppression of free expression. The book argues that artists have been scapegoated by those advocating censorship, as a method of deflecting debate away from the suppression of human rights. The author asserts that censorship of works deemed obscene has been used as a tactic throughout history to suppress women's rights. Heins argues that even if the perceived negative impacts of pornography, hip hop music, and violent films were factually accurate (and she asserts they are not), the ends would not justify the means of degrading the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. She emphasizes that education should be used to help guard against potentially dangerous notions, instead of censorship and suppression of dissent. Background Marjorie Heins is an attorney with a focus on civil liberties. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University in 1967. Heins graduated from Harvard Law School with a magna cum laude distinction, receiving her juris doctor degree in 1978. At the time of the book's publication in 1993, Heins served as the founding director and chief lawyer for the Arts Censorship Project. The project was formed as a division of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1991 during societal conflict in the U.S. over attempts to decrease financing for the National Endowment for the Arts, and to censor the musicians 2 Live Crew. In 2000, Heins became the founding director of the Free Expression Policy Project at the National Coalition Against Censorship. Her published books prior to Sex, Sin, and Blasphemy include: Strictly Ghetto Property: The Story of Los Siete de la Raza (1972), and Cutting the Mustard: Affirmative Action and the Nature of Excellence (1987). Subsequent to the publication of Sex, Sin, and Blasphemy, Heins wrote Not in Front of the Children: "Indecency," Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth in 2001, which received the 2002 Eli M. Oboler Award from the American Library Association; and Priests of Our Democracy: The Supreme Court, Academic