Larry Flynt: My friend, Jerry Falwell

The People vs. Larry Flynt

You may not like what he does, but are you prepared to give up his right to do it? READ MORE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell 

Hustler Magazine v. Falwel

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaHustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held, in a unanimous 8–0 decision (Justice Anthony Kennedy took no part in the consideration or decision of the case), that the First Amendment's free-speech guarantee prohibits awarding damages to public figures to compensate for emotional distress intentionally inflicted upon them.
Thus, Hustler magazine's parody of Jerry Falwell was deemed to be within the law, because the Court found that reasonable people would not have interpreted the parody to contain factual claims, leading to a reversal of the jury verdict in favor of Falwell, who had previously been awarded $150,000 in damages by a lower court.
LINK: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell

 

By Larry Flynt, LARRY FLYNT is the publisher of Hustler magazine and the author of "Sex, Lies and Politics."

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THE FIRST TIME the Rev. Jerry Falwell put his hands on me, I was stunned. Not only had we been archenemies for 15 years, his beliefs and mine traveling in different solar systems, and not only had he sued me for $50 million (a case I lost repeatedly yet eventually won in the Supreme Court), but now he was hugging me in front of millions on the Larry King show.
It was 1997. My autobiography, "An Unseemly Man," had just been published, describing my life as a publisher of pornography. The film "The People vs. Larry Flynt" had recently come out, and the country was well aware of the battle that Falwell and I had fought: a battle that had changed the laws governing what the American public can see and hear in the media and that had dramatically strengthened our right to free speech.
King was conducting the interview. It was the first time since the infamous 1988 trial that the reverend and I had been in the same room together, and the thought of even breathing the same air with him made me sick. I disagreed with Falwell (who died last week) on absolutely everything he preached, and he looked at me as symbolic of all the social ills that a society can possibly have. But I'd do anything to sell the book and the film, and Falwell would do anything to preach, so King's audience of 8 million viewers was all the incentive either of us needed to bring us together.

But let's start at the beginning and flash back to the late 1970s, when the battle between Falwell, the leader of the Moral Majority, and I first began. I was publishing Hustler magazine, which most people know has been pushing the envelope of taste from the very beginning, and Falwell was blasting me every chance he had. He would talk about how I was a slime dealer responsible for the decay of all morals. He called me every terrible name he could think of — names as bad, in my opinion, as any language used in my magazine.
After several years of listening to him bash me and reading his insults, I decided it was time to start poking some fun at him. So we ran a parody ad in Hustler — a takeoff on the then-current Campari ads in which people were interviewed describing "their first time." In the ads, it ultimately became clear that the interviewees were describing their first time sipping Campari. But not in our parody. We had Falwell describing his "first time" as having been with his mother, "drunk off our God-fearing asses," in an outhouse.
Apparently, the reverend didn't find the joke funny. He sued us for libel in federal court in Virginia, claiming that the magazine had inflicted emotional stress on him. It was a long and tedious fight, beginning in 1983 and ending in 1988, but Hustler Magazine Inc. vs. Jerry Falwell was without question my most important battle.
We lost in our initial jury trial, and we lost again in federal appeals court. After spending a fortune, everyone's advice to me was to just settle the case and be done, but I wasn't listening; I wasn't about to pay Falwell $200,000 for hurting his feelings or, as his lawyers called it, "intentional infliction of emotional distress." We appealed to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, and I lost for a third time.
READ MORE: http://www.latimes.com/la-op-flynt20may20-story.html#page=1

Distinguished Speaker Series 2013 Larry Flynt

 Fighting for the First Amendment: A Conversation with Larry Flynt

Larry Flynt, an outspoken and world-renowned defender of First Amendment rights and Chairman of the HUSTLER brand of properties, spoke in a talk titled “Fighting for the First Amendment” on Tuesday, March 5, 2013, in Goldstein Auditorium in the Schine Student Center. Free tickets are available at the Schine Center Box Office. Larry Flynt has been involved in numerous legal battles for free speech in the United States, including his most prominent Supreme Court case, HUSTLER Magazine v. Falwell. Arising from an ad parody in a 1983 publication of the magazine, Rev. Jerry Falwell filed suit against HUSTLER Magazine and Flynt. The Supreme Court justices unanimously decided in 1988 that public figures cannot recover damages for “intentional infliction of emotional distress” based on parodies. The decision set a First Amendment precedent that the interest in protecting free speech surpasses the interest in protecting public figures’ emotions and reputations.
MORE: http://tully.syr.edu/?page_id=1077