'Felt Like Weeping,' Falwell Tells Jurors

Flynt Says Parody Liquor Ad Was Meant to Harm Preacher

ROANOKE, Dec. 4, 1984 -- Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell today testified in federal court that he was angry, hurt and "felt like weeping" after seeing a liquor advertisement parody in the sex magazine Hustler that quoted him as saying that he "always got sloshed" before preaching and that his first sexual encounter had been with his mother.

"In all my life I never believed human beings could do something like this," Falwell said during the second day of a $45 million libel trial against the magazine, its publisher Larry Flynt and Flynt's national magazine-distributing company.

Flynt's attorneys have contended that the appearance of a small-type disclaimer at the bottom of the page advising readers that it was not to be taken seriously means there could be no libel. Today, however, Flynt contradicted his lawyers in a videotaped deposition, in which he said that the ad was intended as fact and that he had intended to harm Falwell.

Libel lawyers say the verdict may well hinge on whether the jury accepts the parody's one sentence disclaimer as evidence that Flynt had neither malice nor reckless disregard for the truth.

The clearly uncomfortable eight women and four men on the jury sat rigid in the darkened courtroom as Falwell's attorneys played the 45-minute deposition taken from Flynt in June at a federal prison in North Carolina, where he was serving time for contempt of court.

"Yes sir, now you see why I wanted to leave the word 'parody' off of it," Flynt said when asked if the acts of incest and drunkenness attributed to Falwell were true. ". . . He's a liar, a hypocrite and a glutton."

"Was it your intention to harm his integrity?" Falwell attorney Norman R. Grutman asked Flynt.

"To assassinate it," Flynt replied calmly.

"Do you realize you can hurt people mentally" by publishing such statements, Grutman asked.

"You're goddamned . . . right," Flynt said.

Flynt also said in his taped testimony that he had sexually explicit photographs of Falwell and his mother, as well as photos of Chief Justice Warren Burger.

The combative, bespectacled Flynt, 41, has not appeared yet in court. He was paralyzed from the waist down after being shot by an unknown assailant in 1978. Attorneys for both sides say he may testify in person Wednesday.