Larry Flynt on God, guilt and being "born again"

Larry Flynt is an Eastern Kentucky native who made a fortune by selling extremely sexually explicit materials. In the late 1970s, he announced that he had become “born again.” He even appeared on a leading Christian television program. But he kept on publishing. While in Los Angeles, Bible Belt Blogger visited Flynt’s tenth-floor executive offices on Wilshire Boulevard.  Here’s what Flynt had to say about God, guilt and being born again.

Q. Did you grow up in church?

A. Very much so. They used to have all the holy rollers that would come around and throw up their tents and play with the snakes. That sort of thing. (That’s) the kind of fire and brimstone I was raised in.

Q. What was your family’s reaction when you started Hustler magazine.

A. All of my family, from grandparents, to mother and father, were religious. They never said anything to me and I never said anything to them.

Q. Not a word?

A. Not a word.

Q. Did you ever feel guilty?

A. No, because I always felt that the whole body was made by God. And if you have a problem with it, you should complain to the manufacturer, just like you do with Ford Motor Company or General Motors. If you get a bad car, you complain to them. I never saw the body as being obscene and sexuality is one of the greatest gifts we have. Other than the desire for survival, the strongest single desire we have is that for sex…

Q. How did you become a born again Christian?

A. Well, you talk to anybody about how it happens and you don’t know how it happens. Just one day it happens. You get that warm feeling over you and almost in a way that you’re somewhat possessed. I knew it wasn’t a normal feeling, but more of a spiritual feeling. Ironically, this is the problem I have with people who have born again experiences. Often, that’s not what it is. It’s a bipolar condition that can be treated easily by a physician, but most of them don’t want to seek medical help for what they profess to be a spiritual awakening. So they just become involved with their local church…

Q. During that time period, you were actually on the PTL Club. Am I remembering that right?

A. Yeah, I went down with Tammy (Faye) and Jim Bakker. They invited me down when they’d heard about my experience. It wasn’t a put-on with them. When I went there I was very serious in terms of sharing what had happened to me and how I felt as a result of it.

Q. So you were sincere?

A. Oh yeah, very sincere?

Q. What were they like?

A. I thought Tammy and Jim were great. They were good hosts and they were very accommodating. They did a good show. If you remember at the time, they were probably the biggest show in the country.

Q. Do you think God exists?

A. (Long pause.) No.

Q. Why?

A. If you are a well-read person and you’re drawing on all aspects of history and scripture, there’s no way that you can conclude the existence of God…

Q. It’s your view that he probably doesn’t exist at all?

A. Hey, I wish he did, because there’s some people I’d like to join in that hereafter. I’m not saying that with any type of blasphemy tone to it. And I’m not trying to change anybody’s mind. If God helps them get through the day, more power to them. They’re entitled to those values and beliefs and I wouldn’t dissuade anybody from believing in God…I guess there’s a lot of truth to what Lenin said when he made the comment that religion is the opium for the masses… [Flynt then spoke about attempts to limit his industry.] You know you’re not supposed to be putting a computer in an eight or nine or ten year old’s room. It’s supposed to be in the family room where it can be monitored. If that’s not good enough for you and you’re still bothered with it, well then throw it in the trash can, because nobody told you to buy it. I’m insulted by the fact that parents will go to Washington and demand that the government be the babysitter. You know, we have to be responsible parents if we’re going to raise our kids.

Q. Is there anything folks in Kentucky should know?

A. The county I was born in in Kentucky, Magoffin County, was the poorest county in the country in 1969 when Johnson ordered the study on poverty. I know what it’s like to be poor. I know what it’s like to be able to dream about things that normal people can’t have. Money in itself is not that important to me. It just gives me the freedom that I need to do the things I want to do.

Q. Why do you think the church worries so much about (the growth of pornography in the United States.)

A. Let me tell you why. Okay? The church has had its hand on our crotch for 2,000 years and the government is exceedingly moving in that direction. If they can control your pleasure center, they can control you. They want to tell you that sex is evil and bad…They want to take one of the greatest things that their so-called creator gave them and tell you how bad it is.

Q. But at this point, with computers, can you put it back in the box? Can they stop it?

A. No, they can’t…The genie’s definitely out of the bottle. The Europeans are much more laid back about sex than we are. There are not orgies in the streets there. They’re just people that are just not uptight about sex.

Comments

[perplexed]

Well, Larry has a lot money thats for sure, I've seen him on TV gambling a million dollars in one night. Its funny how you can choose to boost your own ego or you could maybe go back into the mountains of Kentucky and fund a trade school, or buy a fire engine, or delight some children at Christmas. Mr Flynt is a smart man, I just wish he would learn to be generous man, towards his roots. He could make a difference in the world quietly, with great impact. How about it Larry, make a legacy and make somebody's life better. Buy the way I am well acquainted with the mountain way of life, the do or die philosophy.

[Caleb Powers]

I don't much like how Larry Flynt has made his money, but there are a couple of things about him I do like.

One is that, for twenty years or more, he has refused to sell advertising in any of his magazines to tobacco companies, at a time when virtually all mainstream magazines made fortunes selling it. He has always been against smoking and was one of the earliest influential people to put his money where his mouth was.

Women's magazines always say that Flynt has hurt american women by objectifying them and helping promote pornography. And while they were saying this, these magazines were selling millions of dollars' worth of advertising to cigarette companies every year who were specifically targeting their ads to young women, the last great growth market for smoking. I guess the magazines think lung cancer is better than objectification.

I also like the fact that he has consistently fought the right wing republicans who have so corrupted our government. I don't know what his politics are, and he may just see bashing the right as good for business, but I sense that there is a populism there that we've largely lost in American politics.

And, of course, I've got to love anyone who puts Jerry Falwell in his place, fights Falwell's whiney and meritless lawsuit up to the US Supreme Court -- and wins.

[Michael]

It's sick that Larry has no conscience concerning the demoralization of women. I understand that not all people believe in God, but morals are the foundation of a society. Without morality there is no basis for right and wrong. Sex is the vehicle for both pleasure and reproduction. If used only for pleasure there WILL be children born unexpectedly. And when children are born out of marriage it will hurt the child. We live in a demoralized society where sex is a toy the government can care for fatherless children.

Furthermore pornography is a horrible addiction for men. We are visually stimulated especially to sexual content. It has ruined marriages and families. Wives want to be (and should be) the soul object of her husbands desires. Pornography encourages his eyes to wander from his spouse.

[Allen]

I'm no fan of the business Larry is in but I love the stand he takes.
Him fighting for his rights helps us have ours.

[Bart McQueary]

As Pastor Fred Phelps once told Mr. Flynt, "Your chances of getting to Heaven are better than Jerry Falwell's chances."

[Travis]

Bart, are you really going to quote Fred "God Hates Fags/America/Billy Graham/everyone but me and my kin" Phelps as an expert on anything??? Let alone who gains admission into Heaven?

On our own merits, no one would get to Heaven...there is no one righteous, everyone is corrupt. It is only through Christ, not us.

[peplexed]

You have to realise that Larry is merely a vehicle that gives society what it wants. You can look at Larry and see how he has struggled with life and his choices, but if he wasn't doing what he's doing, it would be another name and another face doing it. To fire him, society must change its wants and desires. Be it through education or religion or genetic altering in the future, its an element that has always been part of society.

[Bruce]

I'm a little confused by this interview. Larry is a "born-again" Christian and does not believe in the existence of God. Why use the term "born-again?" It is obviously a reference to John 3:3. Jesus says, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a man is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. It seems that the man that uttered these words believed in God, and more importantly, claimed to God Himself. What are you "born-again" to?
And let me get this clear.
Larry is a peddler of pornography. He has committed his life to the task of reducing women to the level of objects of lust. Do we really believe that Hustler is art? Do we really believe that Hustler is a magazine with the heart and intention of doing something noble? Have we so lost our direction that we can look past (if we can even see) the dangers of pornography and commend the man because he doesn't agree with smoking? If so, then our society is just as lost as Larry himself.

The man has chosen the way he makes money. But please, let's not even try to esteem what he does. When we can see the "good" in pornograpy, we have lost our moral compass. We live in a society that thinks it's heading north, but has been heading south for decades.

[Marcia]

Yeah, what perplexed said.

Kathleen Parker recently wrote about Joe Francis, the guy behind "Girls Gone Wild." (ugh)

"Francis was in many ways inevitable. If you stuffed a computer with data extracted from the zeitgeist -- equal parts celebrity, narcissism, reality TV, porn, moral relativity -- the computer would spit out "Joe Francis," or someone like him."

Same with Flynt. The culture produces what the culture wants, even if some of us in would rather not.

[Caleb Powers]

Bruce, Flynt now is an atheist or agnostic. At one point in his life, he considered himself a born again christian. This was, as I understand it, primarily as a result of conversion attempts by Jimmy Carter's sister, Ruth Carter Stapleton. This was all a big deal back in the '70s; it made national news at the time.

He certainly doesn't claim (and didn't in the interview) that he is a christian now; this is the second interview I've seen with him in which he describes a christian "conversion experience" as some type of mental illness that could be treated by modern medicine.

In this, he almost (but not quite) shadows suggestions by the famed psychiatrist Abraham Maslow that such a conversion experience is a "peak experience," that is, a particularly dramatic emotional experience that can lead to new insights into one's life. Maslow's work on this builds on work done by William James in his great book "Varieties of Religious Experience."

And you didn't think someone could discuss Larry Flynt and William James in the same post. So there.

[David Duke]

So, Caleb, what you're saying is that it's OK to justify the smut that Flynt peddles as long as he doesn't sell cigarettes and he wins supreme court cases? You're kidding, right? Sometimes I think people are so busy using their brains that they forget the basics that their parents taught them; "two wrongs don't make a right."

And anyone who thinks that winning on legal ground automatically gives that person the moral ground on which to stand needs to rethink their position, very deeply rethink it.

[Caleb Powers]

David, if you read the first line of my previous post, you'll see that I said that I didnt' much like the way Flynt had made his money. I certainly don't support the objectification of women or the publication of pornography.

But you've got to give a guy credit for putting his money where his mouth is. Flynt didn't invent pornography, though he certainly made a lot of money producing it. And he could have made even more if he'd sold cigarette advertising, as, say, Playboy and other "men's magazines" of that era did (and may still do; I don't know, I don't read Playboy or the other magazines, either).

As for his court case, that was legitimate. He published a legitimate parody of an advertisement that wasn't kind to Jerry Falwell. The Supreme Court quite correctly, in my view, ruled that he had the same first amendment rights as the rest of us.

[Marcia]

Okay, there's not, really, a poster here named David Duke, is there? Really?

[The Big Lebowski]

I think the real issue is "does God approve of self-pleasure?"

If s/he does, then of course pornography has a valid, useful place in society. And, as demonstrated via the internet - the majority of americans enjoy porn - regardless of societally-induced feelings of guilt.

It was in the movie Repoman that the immortal words were uttered - "Everybody likes to watch their buddy..." (edited out of respect.)

To the poster who said:

"Wives want to be (and should be) the soul [sic] object of her husbands desires."

My wife is _glad_ to have me in control of my own sex-drive and not pushing it on her as some god-mandated duty.

The Dude (on behalf on OnanCo)

p.s. As for
Onan:

"The earliest interpretations were straightforward. What Onan had done was dishonor his dead brother and shirk his obligations. Exactly how he frustrated the purpose of levirate marriage was irrelevant. The text emphasizes the social or legal setting, with Judah describing what Onan has to do and why. The plain reading is that Onan's sin was refusal to provide his dead brother with an heir."