1977: A Madman Turns 40: 2017- Day 39

   Warning: This article may be considered too racy or controversial. Reading discretion is advised.)

Flynt (Left) and his attorney, during the 1977 indictment proceedings

    40 years ago today, Larry Flynt and his brother Jerry are indicted by the Ohio Attorney General's office for distribution of obscene materials. The Flynt boys founded Hustler magazine and the periodical was known for making Playboy look like a Disney movie. In other words, the state of Ohio arrested Larry and Jerry for selling porn. Flynt eventually fought the charge and they were dropped. But soon afterwards, Flynt was taken to court throughout the nation for his magazine.

    Over the next 18-months, Flynt became known not just as a peddler of smut but developed a reputation as a champion of free speech and defender of the First Amendment. However, some thought he was too dangerous always being in the public eye and in 1978, a white supremacist named Joseph Paul Franklin tried to assassinate Flynt outside a Georgia court house. Ironically, Franklin wasn't quite upset over free speech as the fact that Flynt's publication recently ran an interracial photo shoot.

  The attempted murder left Flynt paralyzed from the waist down but it didn't damper his spirits. 
The attack seemed to awaken the publisher, as Flynt expanded his empire to include the burgeoning field of home video. Despite crippling pain and an addiction pain killers brought on by the assassination attempt and numerous surgeries, Flynt continued his fight for free speech. Over the next 8 or 9 years, Flynt's run-ins with the law would continue make headlines. He'd even make it to the Supreme Court against the Reverend Jerry Falwell over a parody interview in which Falwell 'admitted' to have sex with his mother. 

Flynt, surrounded by bodyguards,
arrives for a hearing of his attempted murderer,  JP Franklin.

     When I went to college in 1996 to study history, one of the first classes I took was Political Science. We studied Flynt's cases in depth, in particular the Flynt V Falwell case. Having been sheltered going to a private Christian school, I felt as the time that censorship was needed to prevent sin. But I learned that without free speech, my beliefs would be in just as much jeopardy as I was willing to put others in.
  
    The name of the Poly-Sci teacher I had might be forgotten but his argument that it's okay to be offended by another person's point of view but it is wrong to take that point of view away has stuck with me. It's one reason I am such a supporter of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. In the 1950s, Congress tried to outlaw comic books but thankfully, a compromise was reached to prevent that. Even more thankful am I that the Comics Code Authority which was a result of said compromise is not defunct. 

        I am not in favor of Larry Flynt's publications and I'm not fond of some of the stunts he's pulled like wearing the American Flag as a diaper but he'd be the person I'd want on my side if my personal right to free speech was in danger. Honestly, I think we need him now more that ever as sadly in this day and age, free speech is being challenged in way unimaginable. Parents want books banned from schools is one thing; an irate parent goes in front of a school board and asks for the removal of Tom Sawyer or A Catcher in the Rye. But now, people are fighting one another (literally, not just with words or lawsuits) because of a point of view they put on Facebook or over who they voted for in the last election. 

#CBLDF

   Everyday's news is fraught with protests filling city streets because of the outrage that others think differently than their peers do. This sort of thing keeps getting worse and worse everyday as social media has given everyone a voice AND turned the populace into a sort of social justice Barney Fife in turn. It's called Freedom of Speech not Freedom FROM speech and America needs people of all backgrounds and belief's to defend it or that right will be gone permanently!

    Until tomorrow...