"This is the best thing to happen to me in a long, long time. Check my filings, sweetie."

Gaming-crazed attorney Jack Thompson may be best known for suing 2 Live Crew and the makers of the Bully video game, but, as the good folks at GamePolitics noted yesterday, this tough-as-nails litigator still finds the time to cruise gay hardcore sites and dig up dirt on rivals. His legal career apparently hanging by the lightest of lashes, the all-purpose anti-everything Christian crusader last week filed graphic man-love sex photos in federal court in a futile attempt to discredit Florida state bar ethics and lunacy proceedings against him.

Never one to be deterred by the swoosh of the oncoming black helicopters, Thompson's recent court filings (pdf) have taken on a conspiratorial tone.

The Bar’s demonstrable mindset is that the “enemy of my enemy is my friend,” as indicated by The Bar’s enthusiastic, recidivist collaboration with Mr. Kent, over a twenty year period, at Thompson’s expense. Lunacy proceedings have been sought and secured, Bar complaints have recently been maintained for nearly three years.

Although better known for his campaigns against violent video games, which he holds responsible for the DC sniper rampage a few years back, some serious hardcore man-on-man action apparently gets a rise out of Thompson, too.

Norm Kent, a Florida criminal defense attorney and longtime Thompson foe, publishes the National Gay News website. Always angling to skewer his gay nemesis, Thompson laid into Kent in court filings last week for “distribution of hardcore porn to anyone of any age.” To prove his point, Thompson went to the site, found some especially hot links, stole the copyrighted material, and then filed the incriminating porn for all to see.

Judge Adalberto Jordan was not impressed (pdf).

The attached exhibit, which includes several graphic images of oral and genital sex between adult males, was filed electronically in the docket in this case, without prior permission from the court… To the extent that the other attorney’s alleged conduct is in any way relevant… there was no need for Mr. Thompson to file these graphic images in the public record. A simple reference to the website and its alleged links would have sufficed… Through his actions, Mr. Thompson made available for unlimited public viewing, on the court’s docketing system, these graphic images. For this reason, by October 5, 2007, Mr. Thompson shall show cause why this incident should not be referred to the court’s Ad Hoc Committee on Attorney Admissions, Peer Review, and Attorney Grievance for appropriate action.

Thompson then went for the money shot. Never one to shy away from a little mano a mano legal wrangle either, the hardened activist took the turgid thrust of history in his own two hands - he grabbed His Honor by his own gavel, and hoisted him up for all to see. Thompson, speaking in the third person, responded thus to the rebuke:

Thompson may have more to say in his own defense as to his alleged contemptuous behavior, but at this juncture, with all respect, he does not apologize for nor regret what he has done… if this court desires to throw Thompson into jail for trying to sound the alarm in this dramatic fashion… then Thompson is prepared to go there.

Go where, again? Thompson is prepared to sacrifice his very liberty and experience the true meaning of hard time - all to establish our right to file pornographic photos with the court, and then submit to the stern crack of the law enforcement crop meted out thereby! Of course, Thompson's obsession with gay sex dates back at least as far as his lesbian-baiting face-offs with Janet Reno, and even made it into the court filings in the aforementioned ethics/sanity proceedings.

You missed the gay sex… I’m sure the voters are going to love that. Go ahead, Judge. File your bar complaint. Make my day.

We know Thompson wouldn't miss the gay sex. Explicit anal action could not be dismissed so cavalierly - clearly emboldened by his latest bit of legal swordplay, Thompson responded enthusiastically via email to GamePolitics's coverage of the latest brouhaha:

I’m not the one in trouble. The judge found a certain lawyer’s material obscene. I absolutely love it. This is the best thing to happen to me in a long, long time. Check my [case] filings, sweetie.

To submit to a court order or blow off a federal judge? Always thinking big, Thompson compared (pfd) himself to another, more famous midnight rider.

To hold Thompson in contempt for alerting the federal court system to the criminal activity… is akin to arresting Paul Revere, in 1775, for “disturbing the peace” with his midnight ride…

Whatever you say, sweetie.®

Burke Hansen, attorney at large, heads a San Francisco law office