John "Jack" B. Thompson, the Coral Gables attorney disbarred in 2008 for -- among other things -- sending swastikas, gay porn, and pictures of gavel-wielding kangaroos to the state supreme court, is now changing careers.
Thompson, who once scrapped with Miami rap group 2 Live Crew over its lyrics and campaigned against Janet Reno by implying that she was a lesbian, is now enrolled in the online Reformed Theological Seminary.
"Some people probably thought I should have kept my view of the world within the religious cloister and not out in the public sphere," he says. "But I had a responsibility to try to be god's voice in the world."
Thompson's legal career effectively ended last November when a federal judge banned him from filing any more lawsuits against either the Florida Supreme Court or The Florida Bar. U.S. District Judge Dudley Bowen Jr. ruled that Thompson's dozen or so lawsuits were "abusive and vexatious."
Instead, Thompson is taking his talents to the Reformed Theological Seminary, where one-sided truth never goes out of style. According to the seminary's website, "the Bible is absolutely and finally authoritative as the inerrant Word of God." No room for deliberative legal mumbo-jumbo and "due process of law" there.
He's also shopping a new book around, tentatively entitled Social Activism 101.
"I believe I influenced public policy," he says, citing a case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court on whether violent video games can be sold to children. "I could write a book on how to get disbarred, but it probably wouldn't sell as well."
His co-author on the book, University of Miami School of Education professor Eugene Provenzo, says Thompson isn't crazy, just too smart for his foes.
"The Bar has gone after him a number of times and tried to say that he has psychiatric problems," Provenzo says. "But he is one of the sanest people I know."
As an example of the ex-lawyer's wit, Provenzo pointed to Thompson's satirical proposal to sell a video game in which the objective was to hunt down and kill video game designers and executives. His point was to throw the idea of unrestricted free speech back at the video game industry, Provenzo says.
Now, as a virtual minister, Thompson will be able to seek the absolute and eternal justice he was denied over and over again in Florida pro-porno courts.
"I'm a pain in the neck to a lot of people," he tells Riptide, John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion in hand.
"Thirty-one years fighting with the bar and the entertainment industry is a pretty good run," he says. "I'm surprised that I lasted that long."
