ABSTRACT
Charles H. Keating, Jr. loathed smut-peddler Larry Flynt. Keating crusaded against pornography for 30 years and it galled him that Flynt’s Hustler magazine had been founded in Keating’s home town of Cincinnati, Ohio. Citizens for Decent Literature (CDL), which Keating founded in 1958, grew to become the largest antipornography organization in the United States with 300 chapters and 100,000 members. In 1970 alone, Keating traveled 200,000 miles giving dozens of speeches against pornography. Keating testified before several Congressional committees and was appointed by President Richard Nixon to serve on the federal Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. The battle between Keating and Flynt was long, personal, bitter, and-if the
rumors are true-violent. Keating and CDL filed numerous lawsuits against Flynt and were instrumental in Flynt’s 1977 conviction for distributing obscenity and engaging in organized crime. Shortly after Flynt’s conviction, one of Keating’s daughters was raped on the University of Cincinnati campus. Keating later came to believe that Flynt had offered a monetary reward for the girl’s assault. A year later, an unidentified gunman shot Larry Flynt, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Keating’s colleagues noticed that he was uncharacteristically silent on the subject of Flynt’s shooting.1
