Was the Hayes Code a good or a bad thing?

Absolutely. 

But the motion picture code was a pragmatic compromise and it was mostly the censorship of sex and violence. I don’t think being required to be less explicit is necessary dangerous. A filmmaker has other venue options. Politically, broadcast TV is wide open. 

However they cannot show as much sex and violence on broadcast TV. And that is government censorship as it’s required by the FCC. It’s probably a hallow rule in the age of the Internet, but I think most people understand the intent is not political or religious based. We still have standards of public decency.  

What was “evil” (though bad might be the better term) was the studio’s self censorship in political and social themes. Depictions of true life like this nation’s abysmal race and social issues was usually whitewashed and softcore racism (toward African Americans) and hardcore racism (toward Native Americans) allowed. And Leftist themes were suppressed. John Ford, who swung liberal at the time, made his great leftist masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath, though it is about the capitalist subjugation of poor whites during the Depression. 

I don’t fault the filmmakers per se, they were employees of a profit driven industry and some of those who did break the Political Code got severely punished by Congress for it during the HUAC era. Big time censorship there. This last conservative/reactionary moral panic truly destroyed lives. And it was not ad hoc woke twitter shaming. It was fucking serious. Dalton Trumbo made a post-Red Scare comeback, but most did not. 

What has been eradicated is official and de facto political censorship and that’s far more important than showing tits, ass, and/or gore in a movie. 

And now we are in another de facto censorship era from the Woke on one side and Jesus, Flag, and Guns crowd on the other. 

And the liberals get the blame.