It is used for censorship plenty, for suppressing the disapproved without rational thought. There are 'ugly laws' on the books because of a bullshit misinterpretation of biblical passage that images seen by a pregnant mother could cause the child to be formed accordingly - never mind that the whole thing is essentially a miracle. Otherwise they wouldn't bother encoding 'common sense' livestock techniques in their holy books! They would leave it for their 'animal husbandry manuals'.

So now they have an excuse to get all of thus unsightly severely maimed Civil War Veterans reduced to begging out of the way. It isn't that we don't want to provide for them at all or have to look at them but it is for the children!

That bit of stupidity got left on the books until the 70s - mostly since it got forgotten until it came up as an excuse for the police to be dicks. Then there are the similar rationales of 'we have to discriminate against gays because they are all sexual predators'.