The Roanoker - November/December 2019 - 33

FOR SIX DAYS IN EARLY DECEMBER OF 1984, AMERICA TURNED ITS EYES TO ROANOKE
AS A NATIONAL CULTURAL WAR PLAYED OUT IN A FEDERAL COURTROOM.
ON ONE SIDE: Jerry Falwell, the Southern Baptist preacher
who established Thomas Road Baptist Church, founded Liberty
University and turned the religious right into a dominant political
power through his Moral Majority political action committee.
On the other: Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine,
whose graphic photo spreads and articles about sex, politics and
religion made competitors Playboy and Penthouse look positively
prudish by comparison.
The legal battle between the two began in Roanoke, but eventually
wound up in the Supreme Court of the United States, with the
resulting decision forever changing media and politics in America.
The case, known as Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, "remains one of
the great cornerstones of modern First Amendment law," according
to Rodney Smolla, dean and professor at the Delaware Law School
of Widener University, who wrote about the case in 1988's "Jerry
Falwell v. Larry Flynt: The First Amendment on Trial."
"It has endured over time and it continues to be looked upon as
one of the most important free speech cases ever decided," Smolla
says. "As much as any case in American history, it guaranteed the
wide-open freedom we have to be very caustic and critical."
For all its legal importance, the battle between Falwell and Flynt
transcended the courtroom, representing a polarizing conflict in
American culture that endures still today, most obviously in knockdown, drag-out battles that play out hourly on Facebook and other
social media channels.
For all their differences, Falwell and Flynt came from similar
backgrounds. Falwell was born and raised in Lynchburg as the
son of a bootlegger. Flynt grew up poor in Magoffin County in
eastern Kentucky, and dabbled in bootlegging himself before
moving into pornography. Flynt founded and grew Hustler through

COURTESY OF JOSHUA WHEELER

TheRoanoker.com

the 1970s, but in 1978, he was attacked by a gunman outside a
Georgia courthouse, partially paralyzing him and putting him in
a wheelchair from then on.
One year after Flynt was shot, Falwell established the Moral
Majority as part of his growing involvement in politics, with his
primary goal being to restrict abortion. Throughout the early '80s,
Falwell also went after pornography, which eventually brought him
into conflict with Flynt.
"Falwell was on his anti-pornography campaign," says Wat
Hopkins, a communications professor at Virginia Tech who
specializes in free-speech law. "If he had had his way, he would
have shut down every porn magazine producer in the country. Flynt
was a target, obviously, because his magazine was borderline between
mainstream pornography and outlandish trash. He responded to the
Falwell political onslaught, and that's how it got started."
Here's how Flynt described what happened next, in an op-ed he
wrote for the Los Angeles Times shortly after Falwell's death in
2007: "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."
The kicker had Falwell saying he always "got sloshed" on Campari,
a 48-proof apéritif, before taking to the pulpit: "You don't think I
could lay down all that bullshit sober, do you?"
The parody, labeled as such in the table of contents and on the
page itself, ran in Hustler's November 1983 magazine. Falwell

ON TV:
Flynt and Falwell
shake hands after
participating in a
forum hosted by the
Thomas Jefferson
Center for the
Protection of Free
Expression. The two
participated in a
national tour after
the Supreme Court
decided the case, as
well as occasional
events thereafter.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019

http://www.TheRoanoker.com

The Roanoker - November/December 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Roanoker - November/December 2019