LOS ANGELES — If there’s one thing LFP founder Larry Flynt isn’t shy about it's his stance on do-gooders trying to take down his adult empire. So with the passing of anti-porn crusader Charles Keating at the age of 90, the Los Angeles Times sat down with Flynt to discuss his one-time nemesis.
Infamous for swindling defenseless retirees through the saving and loan scandal of the ‘80’s that shuttered thousands of financial institutions, Keating, a devout Catholic and corporate attorney, was also known for founding Cincinnati’s Citizens for Decent Literature, later Citizens for Decency Through Law that launched a national campaign against porn.
And Flynt was directly in the crosshairs of Keating’s crusade in the ‘70’s – particularly because of Hustler magazine’s Cincinnati presence where he was charged with engaging in organized crime and pandering obscenity.
Although convicted by a jury, the case was overturned and eventually dropped by the prosecutors in the mid-‘80’s with Flynt paying only $6,000 in court costs.
But even though Keating was embroiled in one of the biggest financial scandals the country has known, Flynt said he was still gunning for him in the '80's.
“I normally don’t have anything to say about anybody who has passed on,” Flynt told the Times. “He wasn’t a personal enemy. I just remember all the trials and prosecutions I went through in the ‘70’s because of him.”
Flynt however, did say Keating was “without a doubt a hypocrite,” recalling an attorney who told him Keating had a private screening of “Deep Throat” in his home, pretending he was showing an example of porn as “trash.”
Flynt said he thought Keating got off on shocking people.
Although Keating managed to somewhat “clean up” his town, forcing porn to open shop in Kentucky, Flynt said, "The one thing I would like to remind people is that the strongest desire we have other than that of survival, is sex. It’s very hard to suppress that appetite.”
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