Larry Flynt takes aim at Rudy Giuliani (and gay people in general) in the opening paragraphs of a new profile on the Hustler publisher over at Vanity Fair, discussing Giuliani’s decision to move in with his friend Howard Koeppel and Koeppel’s longtime partner Mark Hsiao while he was NYC mayor and in the midst of divorcing his second wife.
Says Flynt: “Let me ask you something. As mayor of New York, would you live in an apartment with three gay guys? I’m not gay. I don’t hate gays. But I don’t want to live in an apartment full of them. They’ll bitch and cry and all. That doesn’t bother Giuliani. It doesn’t bother Giuliani to put a dress on to do Saturday Night Live. I don’t trust him. I don’t think he’s electable. I don’t know whether he’s gay or not, but I’m saying, if you got four friends, all gay, living in the same apartment, how are you going to know which one’s gay? I’m surprised no one’s even asking that question. Why do you break up with your wife and move in with gay guys?”
Flynt later goes on to talk about his recent investigations into the sex lives of Republican politicians, and what causes the Ted Haggards and Larry Craigs of the world to behave the way they do:
“I stick to what I do best. The sex business—I know it pretty good. Not saying if I could find someone who was corrupt I wouldn’t do whatever I could to reveal the story. But what we’re doing now is fun, especially the Republicans. When you’re born in a conservative family, raised conservative—conservatives come into life with so much baggage it’s unbelievable. It’s my theory that aberrant sexual behavior is caused by sexual repression, not sexual permissiveness. People have a lot of guilty feelings, a lot of insecurity about their sexual desires and appetites. It’s a never-ending story. I think about this minister that was seeing a gay guy”—Ted Haggard—“and Larry Craig. It’s baggage those people have carried all their lives. And they’ve deceived everyone. They’ve deceived their family. They’ve deceived their country. I don’t believe that these people should be politicians. Not because you’re gay or have some other peccadillo. But because, if you take a public position contrary to the way you live your life, you’re fair game. That means you’re a hypocrite. And that’s what we’re all about. What we’re exposing is hypocrisy…”
Flynt adds: “The lawmakers in this country don’t deserve a break, because they have so abused their authority by trampling on our rights and constitutional liberties. It’s just unspeakable the things they’ve allowed to happen, either through their inaction or taking an action on the wrong bill. I look at it like, people go to Washington with the best intentions, and they get their pockets stuffed with money from lobbyists and then their constituents can no longer get anything from them. I’m so angry with the political system that anything I can do to cause them misery I will.”
Flynt also details the extent to which he pursued Idaho Senator Larry Craig via Dan Moldea, a Washington-based investigative journalist:
“Moldea hired a surveillance expert he had used during the 1998 investigations—’he nailed someone for us’—with the initial expectation that the operative would put Craig under round-the-clock watch. Fortunately for the magazine’s budget, the operative found a source who alleged he could offer advance warning if Craig was going to have some kind of assignation, eliminating the need for long, high-billing nights sitting in a van and drinking cold cups of bad coffee. By the end of May, however, nothing untoward had been observed.”
The Muckraker’s Progress [vanity fair]
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