I'm a crusader. I really believe in the First Amendment, and I use it fully, and I pay a price for that. I keep attacking the villains, the know-nothings, the people who want to take our freedoms away.
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Al Goldstein
Alvin "Al" Goldstein (January 10, 1936 – December 19, 2013) was an American pornographer. He was described in his New York Times obituary as "a cartoonishly vituperative amalgam of borscht belt comic, free-range social critic and sex-obsessed loser who seemed to embody a moment in New York City's cultural history: the sleaze and decay of Times Square in the 1960s and ‘70s." Another writer called him "a hairy, sweaty, cigar-chomping, eczema-ridden fatso". He claimed to have had 7,000 sexual partners. 2Background Goldstein was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to a Jewish family. He attended Boys High. He served in the Army as a photographer (in the Signal Corps), captained the debate team at Pace College (for whose newspaper he interviewed Allen Ginsberg), and was a photojournalist, taking pictures of Jacqueline Kennedy on a 1962 state trip to Pakistan and spending several days in a Cuban jail for taking unauthorized photos of Fidel Castro's brother, Raúl. He sold insurance; wrote freelance articles; ran a dime-pitch concession at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair; sold rugs, encyclopedias, and his own blood; drove a cab (he kept his hack [cab driver's] license active until his death); and landed a job as an industrial spy infiltrating a labor union, an experience that so appalled him he wrote an exposé about it for the New York Free Press, a radical weekly. 2Print publications 3Screw In November 1968 in New York, Al and his partner Jim Buckley, investing $175 each, founded Screw, a weekly tabloid. It featured reviews of porn movies, peep shows, erotic massage parlors, brothels, escorts and other offerings of the adult entertainment industry. Such items were interspersed with sexual news, book reviews of sexual books, such as Anais Nin's Little Birds, many hardcore, "gynecological" pictorials, including "Smut from the Past," and articles on fetishes and other sexual topic
I don’t need a fancy life. I’m happy being bored with television.
Obscenity was mostly boring, but I thought it should be legal.
Courage is unique, rare and applauded, but we must realize that most of the so-called intellectual press is as gutless with respect to the issue of pornography as it is with any other dissent.
When I was twelve, I found my father's collection of pornography. I remember running into the bathroom and jerking off. I was all right. In fact, I was happy to know my father actually looked at pictures of naked women.
The main thing that keeps me going is rage. Rage and anger. I am competitive. I do not want to be defeated. I do not want to lose. I do not want to be emasculated. It's me against them. It's high noon every day of my life, and I think I’ve been shot in the balls a few times, but I’m still able to…
I am also a father now, and I would like my son to live in a saner world than I do. I don’t want my son to have to go through my drawers to find my pornography, as I found my father's. I would like my son to be able to masturbate without feeling guilty, wondering if his mind is going to turn to…
Almost anyone who tries to bring about change has to be a little unbalanced. If you’re balanced, you’re not going to fight. Yes, within me I’m sure there are certain self-destructive components. The average politician has such components too. To be a true believer, to be a zealot, you have to be a…
People all across the country fuck in the same way, with the same instrumentation. I’ve eaten pussy in the Midwest and fucked my brains out throughout most of this country. Sex is a universal, a common theme. I don’t think there are many geographical differences.
All we hear from the censors is ‘What about the children?’ It’s a very emotional issue, but you can’t let the rights of children negate the rights of adults.
Society will always punish the people who say the things that society wants to suppress. Going to jail is not something I relish, but I feel I can do the time, and I refuse to be so intimidated by prison that it will change my course of action.
The Supreme Court is a political instrument composed of malleable political creatures. It's not some august body of intellectuals and cerebral types who are going to maximize fidelity to the Constitution. Today's Court is frightening in its stupidity. Four of the nine justices (Warren Burger,…
If I went for the dollar, I would really be a super-rich person who played it safe. The way to make the most money in this country is to deal with sex without touching on politics. Mafia people I knew in the early years of SCREW's existence said, ‘Quit attacking the Pope. Quit attacking the…
I'm afraid religion’s going to be with us for a long, long time. My objection to religion is that instead of being used constructively, it’s been used as an instrument of destruction. If religion really preached the holiness of the body and its use sexually, I would applaud religion, even though I’m…
We only have to look at the era in Greece 400 years before Christ. The city of Sparta was a military fortress where everything revolved around war and violence. As a matter of fact, it was all right to steal as long as one didn't get caught. Nothing of much value came from that city, unlike Athens…
Pornography is far less dangerous than romanticism. Both are fantasies; both have weak premises. But romanticism is why three out of four marriages wind up in divorce court—sexual unhappiness being one cause. Pornography tries to depict some reality, however. Naturally, it too can be misused, but I…