Larry Flynt, publisher of pornographic publications like Hustler Magazine, will speak on First Amendment issues at 5 p.m. in the Goldstein Auditorium of the Schine Student Center on Tuesday.

The event, titled “Fighting For The First Amendment,” will be featured as a part of the Tully Center’s 2013 Distinguished Speaker Series. Tully Center Director Roy Gutterman said a large school like Syracuse University is a great place to discuss First Amendment issues.

“A college campus is usually a place where we can have discussions about controversial and edgy issues,” Gutterman said, “and Mr. Flynt really does push the envelope.”

In 1978, Flynt was shot outside of a courthouse. The shooting left him paralyzed from the waist down. The man arrested for the crime was a white supremacist who confessed he had shot Flynt because of an interracial photo portrayed in Hustler, according to a Feb. 16, 1997, article in The New York Times.

Flynt’s success with Larry Flynt Publications was so highly regarded that a movie was made to showcase the story of his life. Woody Harrelson portrayed Flynt in the 1996 drama titled “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” according to IMDb.

Gutterman said the event is more than a year and a half in the making.

“I sent out some feelers toward him and followed up. I spent the better part of a year and a half trying to put this together,” he said. “We usually do two or three events a year, and this will be our big one for the spring.”

Flynt has faced a number of legal battles relating to the First Amendment as president of Larry Flynt Publications. In one memorable case, Flyntpublished an obscene cartoon of the conservative Rev. Jerry Falwell in a 1983 edition of Hustler, Gutterman said.

Fallwell sued Flynt because of the cartoon and lost. The case set a precedent against allowing public figures to sue based on parodies, he said.

Last week was the 25th anniversary of the landmark case, which Gutterman said was the reason the Tully Center invited him to speak.

“His adult magazines have really pushed the envelope with obscenity regulators and obscenity regulations,” Gutterman said. “He’s made a lot of steps towards fighting for people’s rights to have the kind of content that they want to have and have the types of opinions that they want to have. He’s really a trailblazer in free speech and free press circles.”

Published on March 5, 2013 at 12:11 am

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