Larry Flynt's visibility may have waned a bit since the 1970s, when he seemed to be in court every other month fighting obscenity and First Amendment battles, but not his spirit. A new documentary on cable's Independent Film Channel spotlights Flynt's political activism. Mike Pearson spoke to him by phone at the Hustler offices in Los Angeles to see what's on his mind.

Are we out of the woods as far as First Amendment battles go?

The First Amendment is under attack every day. We have brush fires all over the country. I'm just thankful there are a handful of us who are still fighting it. When I opened my first club I'd never even read the First Amendment. All I wanted to do was make money and have fun.

It's clear you have no love for the Bush administration. What's your take on the current race for the White House?

I don't know how Obama and his team are going to be able to manage attack ads. They know that's the only way they've got of winning, they're not going to give up. My reason for supporting Obama differs from most Americans': I look at those people on the Supreme Court and realize they're getting older by the minute. If we lose another justice, our civil rights and civil liberties will seriously be placed in jeopardy. The Republicans have never cared a great deal for civil liberties. I give you a new slogan: "The Democrats are always trying to reinvent the wheel, and the Republicans are always trying to reinvent the swastika."

What do you want Larry Flynt's legacy to be?

That I spent most of my adult life fighting to expand the parameters of free speech. I can't think of a more noble goal. I think history will treat me a lot better than the present does.

Did you ever think we'd reach a day when pornography was so readily available?

I (had) seen this coming in the '70s when I started Hustler. The Internet has made access even more available. If you remember, President Johnson established a commission on pornography in 1969 wanting to find out if there was any harm to people being exposed to this material. The reason Johnson did it was an onslaught of 16mm porno films. They had a blue-ribbon panel and several million dollars over two years studying the effect of pornography on society, and they concluded there wasn't any. It wasn't even harmful to kids. They excluded that from their report. . . .

I'm the first to say kids should not be exposed to it, but if people are so concerned, why don't they take information from the scientific community? You've got some lay person in middle America trying to say it's harmful without accepting any scientific evidence. There are two types of people who don't like erotica: Those who don't know what they're missing and those who don't know what they're talking about.

When I go around the country for book signings, young men come up all the time and shake my hand and say, "I want to thank you for helping me make it through puberty."

You and Jerry Falwell became friends after your Supreme Court fight. How do you explain that?

It took 10 years, but I beat him and I beat him good. Jerry knew what I was selling and I knew what he was selling, so he decided (we'd) be friends rather than enemies. My mother told me that regardless of how much you disagree with someone, once you meet them in person there are a lot of things you'll like about them. Jerry often spoke when he should have zipped his lip, but it wasn't that he was disrespectful. He would just get a knee-jerk feeling about how to respond to an issue without thinking.