Meet The Spiritual Forefather Of Conservatives' War On Women

Meet The Spiritual Forefather Of Conservatives' War On Women
Charles Keating, Jr., smiles as he talks with the media outside the Federal Courthouse in Los Angeles, Monday, Dec. 2, 1996. The federal fraud and racketeering conviction of the former Lincoln Savings boss was thrown out Monday by a judge who ruled the jurors had been contaminated by learning of an earlier conviction. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
Charles Keating, Jr., smiles as he talks with the media outside the Federal Courthouse in Los Angeles, Monday, Dec. 2, 1996. The federal fraud and racketeering conviction of the former Lincoln Savings boss was thrown out Monday by a judge who ruled the jurors had been contaminated by learning of an earlier conviction. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

The late Charles Keating, who died last week at the age of 90, is remembered primarily for his role in the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s, as a symbol of the frauds and excesses of an unregulated financial sector — a debacle from which we seem to have learned very little. Yet, ironically, those of us interested in American sexual politics remember a very different side of Keating: the smut-fighting moral entrepreneur who called for more regulation — as long as it pertained to matters of obscenity, rather than investment.

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