6/8/2023 0 Comments Larry flintThis tactic eventually brought about the downfall of Robert L. Flynt has also spent much of his time and fortune on exposing hypocrisy among the guardians of public morals.ĭuring the period leading up to the 1998 impeachment attempt against President Bill Clinton for having an extra-marital affair with a White House intern, Flynt offered $1 million to women who would testify to sexual encounters with members of Congress. The decision demonstrated that the adult entertainment industry is frequently in the vanguard of First Amendment free speech court battles that affect the wider culture. Falwell(1988), the Supreme Court invalidated a lower court’s $200,000 damage award and ruled that a public figure cannot recover damages stemming from a satirical attack. (AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi, used with permission from The Associated Press.) Court case demonstrated effect of adult entertainment on First Amendment jurisprudence Jerry Falwell, the Supreme Court sided with Flynt, who claimed a First Amendment right to parody Falwell in his magazine. In this photo, wheelchair-bound Hustler publisher Larry Flynt is surrounded by reporters outside the U.S. Falwell sued, saying he suffered emotional distress. In 1983, Hustler ran a liquor advertisement parody suggesting that Falwell had lost his virginity to his mother in an outhouse. His most famous legal case involved Jerry Falwell, founder of the right-wing group Moral Majority. Jerry Falwell sued Flynt after 'emotional distress' from parody advertismentįlynt, who proudly refers to himself as a “smut peddler,” spent millions on legal fees in the decades he ran Hustler. One bullet shattered Flynt’s spine and left him in constant pain. He was fighting another charge in a Georgia courthouse in 1978 when he was ambushed and shot, allegedly for publishing explicit photographs of a mixed-race couple. In his first major trial in Cincinnati in 1977, Flynt was championed by celebrities who took out an advertisement in the New York Times that likened his situation to that of a Soviet dissident. Sexually more explicit than Playboy, Hustler featured gynecological photographs, as well as pictures of naked women trussed like turkeys and a girl being fed headfirst into a mincer.įlynt viewed such images as parody that qualified as protected speech, although he admittedly had little interest in the principles of the First Amendment before prosecutors began to bring obscenity charges against him, initiating Flynt’s ongoing battle to test the nation’s obscenity laws. (AP Photo, used with permission from The Associated Press) Prosecutors brought obscenity charges against Flynt for selling Hustler Flynt had been in jail on charges for pandering obscenity and engaging in organized crime. Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt drapes his leg over the arm of a chair while talking with reporters in the Hamilton County Jail in Ohio, in 1977. In July 1974, he began publishing his trademark publication, Hustler, which was followed by Beaver Hunt and Barely Legal. He opened a bar in Dayton, Ohio, in 1968.īy 1973 Flynt had a chain of eight Hustler Clubs, where patrons watched women in bikinis dance in cages. By 22, he had retired as a sailor, had been twice divorced, and was working as a dishwasher. Shortly after his release, he enlisted in the navy, where he became a radar operator. To enter the army, Flynt lied about his age. His father, an alcoholic bootlegger, separated from his wife in 1953. Flynt started pornographic magazine Hustlerįlynt was born in Magoffin County, Kentucky, an impoverished area deep in coal country. (1942–2021), publisher of the pornographic magazine Hustler, has engaged in various legal battles to protect free speech rights. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, used with permission from the Associated Press) Flynt published the pornographic magazine Hustler and was involved in multiple First Amendment cases that tested obscenity laws. In this photo, Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt is surrounded by heavy security as he arrives at the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta, 1979, for the start of his trial on obscenity charges.
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