Gray Davis in 2003, Flynt was among 135 candidates to replace him. He spent his later years in the political arena. He later appeared in a federal courthouse in Los Angeles wearing a Purple Heart and a diaper made out of an American flag.Ī sober Flynt eventually returned to work, pain eased by surgery. Supreme Court after he interrupted proceedings in 1983 by shouting invectives at the justices. “Althea was the best thing that ever happened to me,” a disconsolate Flynt said at the time.įlynt’s behavior in those years was wildly erratic. Althea, who became addicted to heroin and contracted the AIDS virus, drowned in their bathtub in 1987 at age 33. He and his fourth wife, Althea, moved to Los Angeles and spent most of their time behind their mansion’s 5,000-pound steel door. The shooting left Flynt in unrelenting pain for many years, prompting him to give up his proclaimed born-again Christianity and embrace alcohol and pain killers.
Franklin was executed for a slaying despite opposition from Flynt, who was opposed to the death penalty.
While he was involved in an obscenity trial in Georgia in 1978, Flynt was shot twice by white supremacist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin, who said he was incensed by a Hustler mixed-race photo layout. The televangelist sued him for libel after a 1983 Hustler alcohol ad suggested Falwell had lost his virginity to his mother in an outhouse. Supreme Court agreed with him at least once, when he won a long and bitter battle with the Rev. “You have to tolerate the Larry Flynts of this world.”
“My position is that you pay a price to live in a free society, and that price is toleration of some things you don’t like,” he once told the Seattle Times. “Larry Flynt should be remembered as a scourge on society he directly contributed to and profited from the sexual exploitation of women for the majority of his career, and our culture is poorer for it,” Dawn Hawkins, senior vice president and executive director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said in a statement Wednesday.įlynt maintained throughout his life that he wasn’t just a pornographer but also a fierce defender of free-speech rights. It was no shock, then, that Flynt faced many legal fights over obscenity laws or that he was intensely disliked by the religious right and feminist groups.