Purveyor Of Smut, Larry Flynt, Is No Hero, Contrary To What Penn State University Would Have You Believe – Gary L. Morella

Porn king Larry Flynt was given a forum recently at Penn State University for specious reasons of unlimited free speech, which have never existed in this country. Accordingly, Flynt didn't deserve a forum at Penn State but rather condemnation for his actions in promoting the culture of death. A report of Flynt’s presentation is given in the article below taken from the Penn State student paper, The Collegian, followed by a commentary.

The Digital Collegian - Published independently by students at Penn State

NEWS

[ Friday, Oct. 5, 2001 ]

Flynt criticizes censorship

By Jeremy R. Cooke bio Collegian Staff Writer

Hustler publisher Larry Flynt did what he loves to do most last nigh in HUB Heritage Hall. He exercised his right to free speech.

He called President George W. Bush an "idiot," dubbed followers of the Rev. Jerry Falwell members of a "cult" and warned fellow pornographer Hugh Hefner that he is "very much still living in the '50s."

He also called the American mainstream media the plural form of an anatomical expletive that usually doesn't appear in print.

Supporting the freedom to speak out also means tolerating "the thought you hate the most," Flynt told a crowd of a few hundred yesterday.

"We have to tolerate things we don't necessarily like," he added.

Clay Calvert and Bob Richards, communications professors who co-direct the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment, invited Flynt to visit Penn State during an interview with him months ago.

The 58-year-old publisher, who said he has spent millions of dollars of his own money to defend court cases on free speech, agreed to speak on his "own dime."

In his trademark gold-plated wheelchair and red tie, Flynt made good on that promise last night.

"The 'C' in Larry C. Flynt stands for Claxton, but it could just as easily stand for Controversy," Calvert said.

Speaking slowly in a gravely Kentucky accent and pausing at times to riffle through his notes, Flynt said he is troubled by the current direction of the U.S. Supreme Court.

He said the judicial branch of government should not have interfered with the 2000 presidential election in Bush v. Gore.

And Flynt, who won a decisive Supreme Court decision himself in 1988, said he would feel that way even if the court sided with former Vice President Al Gore.

"You must be willing to speak out when the government is infringing on your rights," he said.

The audience at first listened to Flynt in near silence, but gradually some of his comments elicited laughter.

Much of the crowd applauded after he criticized the government's war on illegal drugs. He said the United States should spend more money on helping people "stay off or get off" of drugs and stop trying to keep the substances outside the country.

During the question-and-answer period, Flynt rebutted accusations that he molested one of his daughters and that his magazine's pornography promotes violence against women.

"Some women really like it," State College resident Eileen Akin said of pornography.

Akin said she and her husband have been amassing a "free speech library" since the 1970s. Her 10-year-old son sees the collection sometimes "and he's still a good kid," she said. She said it should be a woman's right to expose her body if she pleases.

After the speech, Flynt signed Akin's original copy of the 1983 Falwell parody advertisement that landed the publisher in court.

Richards said he was impressed by the turnout at the event, and said Flynt would soon be flying in his private jet to speak at Cornell and Harvard universities.

After that, what is Flynt's goal for the future? "To grow old gracefully," he said.

What strikes me as particularly disturbing in this Penn State Collegian report about a man who believes in unlimited free speech, which has never existed in this country for very good reasons if societal common good carries any meaning, a man whose idea of "free speech" means wantonly breaking every obscenity law on the books, which means that he's a pathological felon, is the scope of effect that his putrid kind has on society as a whole to the point where a mother of a ten year old son has no problem publicly admitting that she and her husband allow this boy to view pornographic filth anesthetized as a "free speech library."

I also observed that the lunatic radical feminist fringe at Penn State, who can’t even bring themselves to spelling “woman” correctly, (it’s “womyn” for them), was strangely silent regarding the canonization of a man whose life’s work is the destruction of the very concept of authentic femininity by reducing women to being animals to be used and discarded for pleasure purposes only. Of course, this is to be expected. Freedom confused as license makes strange bedfellows, which is why you see the iron-clad unity of those demanding reproductive rights to kill innocents in the womb, special rights to promote sexually perverse lifestyles, and unlimited rights to promote any all forms of pornography. You will never see anyone from these groups challenge the “license” of those from another group because that would be an admission that there are cracks in their hedonistic agendas, which demand that the world make them comfortable with their vices.

People like Larry Flynt are no "free speech" heroes as erroneously held by the Penn State Professors who have lost their collective senses by giving him a forum to profess his filthy lies. They are lawbreakers who deserve commensurate punishment for their crimes. And if there is a God in Heaven, Whose mercy is meaningless without His justice, these individuals will, barring repentance, which should be our foremost prayer, finally get what they deserve, if not in this life, certainly in the next. The fact that Flynt was given a forum at Penn State University in the name of “free speech” comes as no surprise. Graham Spanier’s Penn State has a history of promoting pornographic filth as education at taxpayer expense, with Spanier publicly telling the Pennsylvania House that “he doesn’t know what the meaning of wrong is,” in regard to his being challenged that what Penn State did at taxpayer expense in promoting the recent pornographic events Sex-Faire and C-fest as “education” WERE WRONG, as could be ascertained by any individual still capable of rational thought.

These souls require prayer to turn away from what they've become as they've long since lost any sense of sanity as to the ramifications of their actions which have, ultimately, eternal consequences, a far cry from "growing old gracefully," which in the natural realm is something that Larry Flynt will never realize given the propagation of moral rot that he's personally responsible for. So much for the fantasy world in which he lives in which a hypocrite demands support for a "war on drugs" while concurrently pushing the most intoxicating of drugs on mankind, a proven behavior that is as debilitating if not more so than the strongest drug imaginable, a drug that kills the soul in its destruction of human beings, in particular, the family, by the celebration of hedonism in all forms - pornography.

The Larry Flynts of the world, and especially those who hold them in high esteem, are to be pitied and prayed for. And in the course of that prayer, the world must be made to see what they've become as agents of the "father-of-lies." Of that, make no mistake! We cannot judge dispositions. Only God can do that. But we can judge actions in accordance with the teachings of our faith and rational thought since faith and reason are married, not divorced. And when we encounter actions that are so heinous such as to cry out for correction, we are remiss as Christians if we don't answer that call.