BISMARCK, N.D. – For many years, I believed former attorney Jack Thompson, the man who once prosecuted 2 Live Crew for obscenity, spent years concocting and promoting flawed legislation that sought to regulate video games like pornography and was later disbarred for a variety of reasons tracing back to his bizarre behavior inside and outside the courtroom, was the craziest anti-porn activist out there.

I had ample reason for believing this, not the least of which was born from personal experience with the man. On several occasions, I interviewed (or tried to interview, at least) Thompson about his efforts to get legislatures across the country to take seriously his ideas for regulating both online pornography and video games. In one such interview, Thompson claimed to be a “big fan” of Frank Zappa — a claim that, if true, has got to be one of the strangest affinities ever proclaimed by a social conservative.

The same guy who thought 2 Live Crew should go to jail sits around humming along to songs like “Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?” Not impossible, I suppose, but certainly not a song I would have expected to find on the playlist of the same guy who once successfully lobbied the Federal Communications Commission to fine a radio station for broadcasting Uncle Bonsai’s “Boys Want Sex in the Morning.”

At any rate, I now realize I only thought Thompson was the craziest anti-porn activist out there because I hadn’t yet heard of Chris Sevier, a man who (among many other crazy things) keeps suing for the right to marry his laptop because he doesn’t believe in same-sex marriage, or some such lunacy.

When he’s not having his lawsuits tossed out of court by irritated federal judges who have real shit to do, Sevier apparently goes around stumping for new legislation called the Human Trafficking Prevention Act (HTPA), a proposal currently under consideration by several dozen state legislatures, including North Dakota (until the bill was withdrawn last week, much to Sevier’s chagrin).

If you listen to Sevier’s appearance on a Fargo-based radio show recorded Jan. 11, you’ll find he’s able to sound almost rational for short stretches of time, but those stretches quickly yield to insisting those who disagree with him are child pornography fans and/or human trafficking apologists.

Sevier also repeatedly insists the definition of obscene materials under state and federal law is clear and unambiguous and applicable to anything pornographic — which anyone who has ever spoken to any reputable attorney should immediately recognize as an outside-the-mainstream opinion masquerading as fact.

Given his background and (alleged) legal education, Sevier knows damn well obscenity is a question for trial, not something one can ascertain simply by reading the plain text of the statutes that define the concept. This is the whole point of the “Miller Test”: Only once the test has been applied by a jury can a legal determination of obscenity be made.

You wouldn’t know this from reading the website for the HTPA, though, where the note about Miller v California in the “case law” section claims the Supreme Court found “pornography is not protected for purposes of the First Amendment” and “defines what obscenity is in a manner that parallels the state’s legal definition of obscenity.”

This post isn’t a legal analysis, and I’m not qualified to provide such, but I suspect if you were to read that pair of assertions to any attorney experienced in First Amendment jurisprudence, she or he would tell you it’s a half-truth, at best — and a flat-out lie at worst.

In his radio rant, Sevier defended the HTPA’s provision requiring manufacturers, distributors and sellers of any internet-capable device to deliver such products with content filters pre-installed (filters consumers would have to pay $20 to disable, no less) by saying it was fully in keeping with existing laws regulating pornography.

As an example, Sevier cited things like the blinders put over adult magazines available for purchase at convenience stores and the admission tax charged to strip club patrons in Texas (a practice upheld by the court in Combs v. Texas Entertainment Association) to say similar provisions in the HTPA would also be found constitutional if challenged in court.

A strip club isn’t an information resource like the internet, however, and neither is a convenience store. And while one could plausibly argue the primary reason anybody goes into a strip club or buys Playboy is to look at the naked women therein (well, the once-naked women therein with respect to Playboy), one can’t very well argue the only reason anyone uses the internet is to look at porn, cute little songs to the contrary notwithstanding.

Perhaps someone slipped the North Dakota legislature a note about how this whole HTPA thing might not be as constitutionally rock-solid as its advocates claim, because the legislature dropped consideration of the bill the same morning Sevier appeared on the radio. What was Sevier’s rational, well-reasoned response to the news the bill had been dropped? He threatened to sue everyone involved in the decision, of course.

For having the audacity to suggest the legislature would consider the HTPA again during their next session, Rep. Lawrence Klein — a putative ally of Sevier and his ilk — was told by Sevier his “suggestion means that children and victims of trafficking will have to suffer until 2019 because you were spooked by criticism.”

That’s right folks: If you don’t think this bill is solidly constitutional and profoundly brilliant public policy, you’re clearly in favor of innocent women and children suffering at the hands of nefarious human traffickers. Nothing remotely ad hominem about that bit of logical gymnastics, right?

Given their history of decades of listening to guys like Jack Thompson, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised find out legislatures around the country still listen to unhinged zealots like Chris Sevier. And I suppose I’d better get used to it, too: The list of states in which some version of the HTPA is being weighed numbers more than 30, according to the lobbyists pushing the bill.

When the day is done, however, my guess is all the legislatures involved are going to have to show for their efforts is a few dozen angry letters from a litigious wacko who’s still trying to get a Justice of the Peace to issue a marriage license to his Airbook.

Image: Chris Sevier via WZTV Fox 17.