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Alvin "Al" Goldstein (b. January 10, 1936, New York City) is an American publisher and pornographer. Goldstein founded the pornographic magazine Screw in 1968. He was also the host and producer (with radio personality Alex Bennett) of Midnight Blue, a New York leased-public access cable television series. He acted in Let My Puppets Come (1976), a puppet porn movie.

His company Milky Way Productions, home of Screw and his long-running cable show, Midnight Blue, went into bankruptcy in 2004. His mansion in Pompano Beach, Florida, with the 11-foot statue of an obscene finger gesture out back, was sold in June 2004 to pay debts. After his bankruptcy he served time in Rikers Island prison after he published a former employee's telephone number in Screw and encouraged readers to call her. He then received three years’ probation for similar treatment of his third wife, and was arrested for shoplifting. In 2005 he became homeless, until his friend the magician Penn Jillette offered to pay the rent on an apartment. In 2005 he became the national marketing director for XonDemand, an Internet video-on-demand porn website.

In 2005 a documentary was made by James Guardino about Goldstein, titled The Trials of Al Goldstein. In 2006, Goldstein released an autobiography, through Thunder’s Mouth Press, co-written with Josh Alan Friedman, titled My Screwed Life, which has received favourable reviews.

In late March 2007, Al launched his presidential campaign for the 2008 election. Campaign slogans include "Support Al, He likes it on top".

On August 29, in response to the Larry Craig scandal he declared in his blog that he was bisexual, and said he'll be "the first presidential candidate to admit to sucking cock and the first to turn fully gay mid-campaign."

However, in a presidential campaign video posted on YouTube, Al admits he is straight and has been married five times. He did state in the same video that he supports gay marriage.

Views on pornography and religion

In his book A Rebel Without a Shul, Luke Ford writes about a conversation he had with Goldstein. During this conversation he asked Goldstein why the porn industry contained so many Jews. Goldstein answered, "The only reason...is that...we don't believe in authoritarianism." Ford then asked, "What does it mean to you to be a Jew?" To which Goldstein responded, "It doesn't mean shit. It means that I'm called a kike." Ford also asked, "Do you believe in God?" Goldstein said, "I believe in me. I'm God. Fuck God. God is your need to believe in some super being. I am the super being. I am your God, admit it. We're random. We're the flea on the ass of the dog."

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Al Goldstein", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0