In 1983 the pornographic magazine Hustler published a parody ad attacking Jerry Falwell. The ad featured a fake interview in which the evangelical minister described having an incestuous encounter with his mother in an outhouse.
Falwell sued Hustler’s publisher, Larry Flynt, for libel, invasion of privacy, and emotional distress. Falwell said that while he could tolerate insults against himself, he couldn’t abide attacks on his family.
Falwell won most of the lower court rulings. But he lost at the Supreme Court, which ruled that the satirical ad was legal under the First Amendment. The justices wrote that the ad was “doubtless gross and repugnant,” but that since Falwell was a public figure, his mom was fair game. After exhausting all legal recourse, Falwell accepted the decision.
In the aftermath of the massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris on January 7, many commentators have strained to avoid mentioning the religion of the alleged attackers, even though the attackers themselves made it clear that they felt called to violence by their Muslim faith.
Other pundits engaged in a kind of false equivalency, suggesting that Christians are just as likely to resort to violence when offended. During a discussion of the massacre on the MSNBC show Now with Alex Wagner, a panelist cited Falwell’s lawsuit as proof that, in his words, “this isn’t just Islamic extremism,” but Christian extremism too—to the apparent approval of the other panelists.
In a free and democratic society governed by the rule of law, people have many avenues of recourse—not only lawsuits but also protests, boycotts, ad campaigns, and the ballot box, to name a few—against perceived injustices.
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