Pornographer and First Amendment advocate Larry Flynt, the founder of Hustler Magazine, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 78, the Washington Post reports.
Flynt made a fortune on the back of his pornography empire, which included print magazines, movies and clubs. Flynt faced multiple lawsuits and criminal charges for the explicit content of his publications, but he continued to fight for his right to publish the as a First Amendment issue.
Paralyzed by an assassin’s bullet in 1978, Flynt was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
“Playboy and Penthouse,” he once told an interviewer, “were parading their pornography as art, with the air-brushing and the soft lens. I realized that if we became more explicit, we could get a huge piece of this market. . . . I sensed that raw sex was what men wanted. And I was right.”