By BookPerson Joel Nihlean
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“I may not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it”
-Voltaire
He’s been called outspoken, offensive, distasteful, a crooked smut peddling troll. He’s also been called one of the most important defenders of the 1st Amendment in the past 50 years and a civil liberties hero. He’s been both deified and demonized, but truth is more complicated than picking a side and being for or against Larry Flynt. Like the real world, he is complicated and is all of the above, both good and bad.
It’s said that you don’t test free speech through the words of those you agree with, but those you don’t. Larry Flynt’s life has been that test personified. He’s known for exploiting and denigrating women, publishing an image of a woman being put though a meat grinder, for putting feminist icon Gloria Steinem on a wanted poster, printing racist and violent cartoons, and for calling the addressing the Justices of the Supreme Court as “eight assholes and a token c***”. He also once wore the American flag as a diaper. Flynt spent six months in jail for that fashion faux paux, now an act of protected speech under the First Amendment. It’s safe to say Flynt is a world-class shit starter.
The truth is you don’t need to like the man or what he has done, but you must admit he is a fearless and bullheaded, if entirely unlikely crusader for the first amendment. His actions, legal battles, courtroom antics, crusades against political hypocrisy, and parodies of the religious right have expanded the parameters of free speech and he has dedicated much of his life to pushing those boundaries even further, which benefits the whole country, not just the porn industry. Like it or not, he has every right to say what he says and to impinge on that right, even a little, is to stand on a very slippery slope.
Mr. Flynt’s latest book, One Nation Under Sex, tackles his two seemingly favorite topics: the sex lives of others and hypocrisy in politics, subjects that seem eternally intertwined. Co-written with Columbia University historian David Eisenbach, the book reveals how secret sex lives have driven pivotal decisions. He asserts, among other things, that Ben Franklin saved the American Revolution by seducing French Women, a gay love affair between President James Buchanan and Senator William King aided the secession movement, and a lesbian relationship inspired Eleanor Roosevelt to become a revolutionary crusader for equal rights. If you say this book does not interest you, not even in the slightest, I might not call you a liar, but I’ll think it.
Larry Flynt is coming to BookPeople next week, Tuesday July 26 at 7PM, in conversation with Jordan Smith of the Austin Chronicle. Some of the staff here are grossed out by him, others cannot wait to hear him speak. But one thing all of us here agree on is that free speech is central to a real and thriving democracy and certainly something an independent bookstore could never survive without.
BookPeople 
Larry Flynt will probably never be anyone’s poster child for the defender of peoples rights, or even their last choice. But the fact remains he has been one of the most controversial and outspoken defenders of free speech over the last half century pushing the buck as far as possible repeatedly and winning a good portion of the time. Aside from his most outlandish fights, some of which he has taken to the supreme court and won there are some that people don’t think about. I had forgotten that he also has fought for the right under “free speech” as guaranteed under the constitution for U.S. news people to go into combat situations that we are involved in. Whether or not you agree that is important or not, it changed the way the U.S. military conducts itself in a warzone. He fought the U.S. Department of Defense on this point all the way back to the early 80’s when we invaded Grenada and won.(Wikipedia)
There is something about Larry Flynt to disgust, amaze, embarrass and confuse everybody. He is an enigma of sorts who has to be the perennial troublemaker and instigator in the national stage. He takes his disdain for politics and those who live in it to a whole new level. I am in a grad level class on Communication ethics and one of the things we have this week is the Legalistic perspective on ethics in general. One of the scholars in our text is Kathty Fitzpatrick that states:”Law is about what people must do, while ethics is about what people should do…Ethics begins where law ends” (The Ethics of Human Communication, Johannessen, 2011, p. 92). This is the type of thing that Flynt has taken to task over and over for decades. Another point that an make following the legalistic approach easier is,”We might use Supreme Court criteria, or state legistlation, defining obscenity, pornography, libel, or slander to judge whether a particular message is ethical on those grounds.(EHC, Chapter 6, p.92). Flynt always found that answer to be to easy and has always pushed those laws about Free Speech to it’s boundaries time and time again, making our lawmakers and the public have to think about what those right really mean….even to a person who is a pornographer. On a final note, our text makes one more point:”How should we answer the question, to what degree can or should we enforce ethical standards for communication through government law or regulation? What degrees of soundness might ther be in two old but seemingly countrary sayings? “You can’t legislate morality”. “There ought to be a law”. (EHC, Chapter 6, p.92).
Whether you like anything about the man (most may not), he has been a very interesting character to watch test the boundaries of our nations “morality police” for a very long time now. Thanks for the article.
Greg Stockton, Drury University grad student, http://www.drury.edu