by Brigitte Berman
When the outspoken publisher Hugh Hefner brought out the highly controversial Playboy magazine in 1953, he was hailed a hero of the sexual revolution. But not everybody accepted the new benchmark that Hefner set with regard to the liberation of the print presses. Church and state declared a war on the proponent of free speech that lasted decades. Today, Hefner is still widely viewed as a hedonistic macho. His services as a lawyer, his role as a catalyst for the African-American Civil Rights Movement and his actions against the Mc Carthy witch-hunts have, however, been forgotten. A tongue-in-cheek glimpse of Hugh Hefner’s thoroughly sensual fight against the state, the religious establishment and militant feminists.