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Ryan but rather an old sea yarn, he
insists. "It's historical fiction," he says.
"The key word is fiction."
— Naomi Pfifferman
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
Trading Jabs
It was billed as a championship
heavyweight bout, the great debate
between Larry Flynt, the publisher of
Hustler and other pornographic maga-
zines, and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach,
author of Kosher Sex and the Dr. Ruth
of the rabbinical world.
As it turned out, it was more like
an old Charlie Chaplin or Buster
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
proposed his debate with pub-
lisher Larry Flynt. The rabbi's
latest book is "Dating Secrets
of the Ten Commandments."
Keaton two-reeler, with the skinny
and nimble Boteach bobbing, jabbing
and weaving, while the heavyset Flynt
sat there placidly, flicking off the jabs
and occasionally throwing a punch of
his own.
The debate was presented by Los
Angeles' Sephardic Educational
Center, and not everybody was happy
about its sponsorship.
Several synagogues declined to host
the event, and Dr Jose Nessim, presi-
dent of the center, acknowledged that
a number of rabbis had protested
Flynt's appearance.
One note, which the center made
available, was from Rabbi David
Wolpe of L.A.'s Sinai Temple.
"Flynt ought not to be given the
sponsorship of a Jewish educational
institution," Wolpe wrote. "He does
not merit it. His life is devoted to the
dissemination of pornography, to the
objectification and degradation of
human beings. Rabbi Boteach ought
not to demean himself by appearing
on the same platform."
The referee for the event was Los
Angeles Times columnist Robert
Scheer, who tried, with sporadic suc-
cess, to point Boteach back to his cor-
ner at the end of a round. Joining as
an unannounced wild card was
Roseanne, the television personality
and student of Kabbala, who sat
between the two combatants and did
little to raise the level of last week's
debate.
Nevertheless, the 750-strong, most-
ly youngish audience apparently got
its $15 per-ticket worth, applauding
the best punch lines and peppering
the speakers with questions, some
even more far out than the debate
itself.
Boteach's main argument was that
pornography degrades and dehuman-
izes both men and women and causes
marital dissatisfaction because few
wives can equal the abundantly
endowed and unin-
hibited porno
queens.
Delving into his
bag of statistics,
Boteach asserted that
84 percent of men
fantasize about other
women while making
love to their wives.
Flynt, whom Scheer
introduced as "a hero
in the constitutional
and First Amendment
struggle for freedom of
expression," took a swipe at Boteach
as a "Jewish Jerry Falwell" before
delivering his central message.
"It's OK to have values if they work
for you, but it's a big mistake to
impose your morality on others," said
Flynt.
Roseanne interjected that both reli-
gion and pornography were about
controlling women, but, since she had
reached menopause, sex was of little
interest to her.
Cleverly weaving in a Passover
theme, she observed that "being liber-
ated from sex, I've been freed from
slavery and the land of Egypt."
During the question period, one
man wondered how the rabbi had
become an expert on pornography with-
out perusing the stuff Another audience
member asked Boteach, an Orthodox
rabbi, to fight for the ordination of
women rabbis and the abolition of the
prayer in which men thank God for
having made them men.
Nessim shrugged off criticism of the
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