|
 Some Light on the Jack Thompson Follies
By Norm Kent
As a gay rights lawyer for 30 years in South Florida, I have met some incredibly wild and weird people, from Fred Phelps to Anita Bryant.
Twenty years ago, there was this guy who wanted radio talk show host Neil Rogers off the air not only because Neil was openly gay but because he was purportedly soliciting teenage boys for sex on the air.
How loose a cannon was this guy? He was writing letters to the Sheriff and State Attorney demanding Neil be taken away in cuffs one minute, then stalking and following him home from work the next. In one instance, documented by testimony in court, he was accused of attempting to drive Neil off the road by his station on the 79th street Causeway.
As Neil’s lawyer, I was so concerned about this aberrant behavior that the radio station and I went to court and sued this man, securing a Permanent Injunction and Restraining Order against him, barring him from coming within 500 yards of Neil’s person or property.
We prevailed in court and secured injunctions and restraining orders which are still in effect today. In fact, Jack Thompson is facing a December court date for failing recently to abide by them. So until his recent violations, which I have never discussed here, and will prove up in court, Jack had to focus on other issues that would draw him notoriety.
After Rogers, Jack targeted Janet Reno for allegedly being a lesbian, Luther Campbell and 2 Live Crew for being too obscene, and Howard Stern for being too pornographic. Last year, he was on TV haunting a retail store that sold scantily-clad Santa Clauses as a Christmas novelty gift. He fashioned himself into a morally-driven anti-pornography crusader.
If there is a sexual issue that makes the news, there is likely going to be a press release coming from the bowels of the bedroom office of the Minister of Moral Gables. He will applaud Jim Naugle, censure the ACLU, and bash gay marriage. Still, he has found one new cause which has made him a known public figure. But not in the way he hoped. He has become the international laughingstock of the video gaming community.
In the repressive McCarthy-like 1950’s you had zealots combating the spread of comic books. Today, you have Jack Thompson fighting video games on CNN and MSNBC, boldly telling the world how gamers become serial killers. Then you hear him say how he is suing the manufacturers to stop the release of ‘Bully,’ or ‘Grand Theft Auto’ or whatever. A little video game violence will lead to a major Jack Thompson press release. He will inject himself into scores of news reports on the subject.
Ironically, on that last issue, he has never done any authentic research of his own. He argues his cause by touting the finding of others while filing lawsuits which have not prevailed. Thompson’s true colors have caught up with him, however. Judges from two different states have hammered him for abusing the legal system in separate cases where he was trying to make a case against video game violence.
There is sweet irony in place here. This is a guy who relentlessly sought to remove Howard Stern from the airwaves for not abiding by the rules of indecency as articulated by the Federal Communications Commission. Today, while Howard Stern is making millions of dollars each year, Thompson is the target of his own regulatory agency, the Florida Bar, for not following the rules of civility our profession dictates.
Here is a guy who has tried to make life miserable for millions of gamers internationally by interfering with their pleasure and enjoyment now crying in federal court that he can’t sleep at night and the whole deal is causing him angina. What is that Bible quote about reaping what you sow?
Here is a guy who has cultivated a reputation crusading against obscenity and homosexual matters. He once actually filed a Bar complaint against me-unsuccessfully, of course- because the silhouette for my law office logo is of a “naked male” holding a scale of justice, instead of a blind female. Now he finds himself the target of a federal court judge who has accused him of unnecessarily filing indecent pleadings – gay porn- in court documents.
Actually, the accusations are so many and varied against Thompson they are hard to summarize in a paragraph. I guess that is why the Florida Bar complaints are over 50 pages long. A conservative jurist from Alabama ruled Thompson lied and committed fraud in his pleadings. A liberal jurist in Dade County ruled that he had threatened the Court and demeaned the dignity of the forum.
Law firms that represented guys like Jeb Bush, who you would think might side with Thompson, found his conduct reprehensible and violated a score of professional rules. They all filed complaints, not because of what Thompson believes, but because his methods were consummately unprofessional.
The Florida Bar pursued these grievances, starting with my own in August of 2004. I brought to the attention of the Bar the wrongful nature of Mr. Thompson’s allegations against Beasley Broadcasting, who aired the Howard Stern Show on WQAM. Others followed, and the floodgates opened. Everyone finally started standing up to the schoolyard bully who was Jack Thompson. And the roof fell in for him. My own complaints seemed minimal compared to the other charges he began facing.
For the past two years, the complaints have endured the exacting due process procedures of the Florida Bar. They first went to staff counsel, then to investigators, and then on to grievance committees, which are composed of cross sections of the Bar, the judiciary and the public. The grievances were validated again and again, following the slow and inexorable path to a final judgment.
The Florida Bar filed suit against him for his misconduct in the Supreme Court earlier this year. The master of decency was charged with indecency. Thompson did not yield. He went to federal court and sued the entire Bar, the Supreme Court, his Bar referee, and the judge trying the case, blaming everyone but himself. The process has been stalled by his dilatory tactics, which include these suits that are methodically proving to be legally specious.
All the pleadings Thompson files in courts were best summarized by one distinguished jurist, Paul Huck: “Thompson’s allegations are wild and baseless.”
That thought was echoed this month by yet another District Court Judge, Adalberto Jordan: “Thompson seems to think there is this vast conspiracy against him everywhere…and that he did nothing wrong…just because he thinks so does not mean I have to agree…” Beware, Jack, here comes ‘da judge.’
Heck, the Alabama Bar Association has set him down for trial in October, the Florida Bar Association in November, and a Broward Judge in December.
Eventually he will pay a price and the Bar and Supreme Court of this state will exact sanctions against him which they deem appropriate.
Last week, a federal judge told Jack that I have nothing to do with this case; that it is a Bar proceeding against him, not me or this website. Still, he can’t hear the message of the court. He filed another pleading today trying to name me as a defendant. Not satisfied calling Nationalgaynews a porn portal, today he referred to us as a ‘cesspool.’ For all the time he spends here reading us online, what does that make him?
I am a lawyer who has a link on normkent.com to nationalgaynews, which has a link to adult sites. If you go to those adult sites, and then link into one or two of them, you may find graphic photos.
According to Thompson, that means I am guilty of criminally trafficking in obscenity. The guy actually wrote letters last week to the US Attorney, the State Attorney, the Sheriff, the FBI, and the Governor, asking that I be arrested for this immediately. If he expected me to shut up and look the other way, he picked the wrong guy.
Jack sought and wanted publicity, and he is getting all the notoriety he begged for. It is just that Jack, you can’t control the joysticks anymore.
You have run into something you forgot to take into account, whether it is on this website, on game politics.com, or the justice blogs of the ABA journal.
We call it a free press. Deal with it.
NGN News Update
Judge Jordan entered a written order vacating his prior order referring Thompson to the Ad Hoc Committee on Peer Review on Thursday, October 11, advising Thompson that he was only doing so because he promised never again to file pornographic pleadings in the court’s file, while at the same time warning him that future conduct of that kind would lead to disciplinary action being initiated against him.
|
Advertisements
Home 
Staff Blogs 
