X-Rated Businesses’ Defender Proud of Legal Track Record
On a recent afternoon, attorney Roger Jon Diamond’s work took him into a dimly lit club where he chatted business with the manager. Nearby, a blond clad in nothing but a G-string gyrated before a patron, his face hidden in the dark.
Diamond didn’t see the nakedness, but the raw honesty of self-expression. What others call obscenity, he insists is a 1st Amendment right. And when cities try to trample on such rights, Diamond sues. And very often, he wins.
This is how Diamond earns his living, and a reputation among his critics as one of Southern California’s leading defenders of what many consider sleaze.
Through unrelenting legal battles often fought all the way to the state’s Supreme Court, the 54-year-old attorney has helped shape the laws that protect California’s adult entertainment industry. Diamond said he is proud to represent scores of sex-oriented businesses in Orange, Los Angeles, Ventura and San Bernardino counties.
“When I was a kid, we used to go around saying, ‘Well, it’s a free country, isn’t it?’ . . . We cherished that freedom,” Diamond said in a recent interview, his words delivered like a barrage of bullets. “I feel that we have to defend that freedom for the most unpopular causes, or we all lose it.”
He is hailed by his clients as a modern-day freedom fighter, but critics say Diamond is hiding behind the U.S. Constitution, using it to defend an industry that has been blamed for a variety of ills: sex crimes, exploitation of women and deterioration of neighborhoods. His success, they say, means that families, hard-working homeowners and others suffer.
“He’s not standing up for anybody’s 1st Amendment rights. He’s being paid a lot of money to represent these filthy businesses, to come into my city and tell me about rights. Then he goes back to his nice, upscale office,” said Bob Wilson, who spent the last 10 years fighting to rid Garden Grove Boulevard of its sex-oriented establishments, some of which are represented by Diamond. “I have no respect for him.”
So it is a telling sign that Diamond has earned the respect of some of his adversaries, who admit that the attorney has a keen knowledge of the law.
“He’s a very vocal advocate for his clients, one of the best in what he does,” said Dick Jones, Westminster’s city attorney, who has opposed Diamond in court on several occasions. “There’s no doubt he’s passionate about the law.”
The Santa Monica-based attorney has made a name for himself through a series of legal victories, drawing clients as far as New York. But most of his cases are in Southern California, particularly Orange County, where he says an entrepreneurial spirit and a demand for sex-oriented businesses clash with a strong sense of moral responsibility.
Several local adult entertainment landmarks--or eyesores, to critics--such as Garden Grove Boulevard’s A-Z Adult Books, Anaheim’s Imperial Theater and Huntington Beach’s Paradise Specialties Inc., are open today as a result of Diamond’s work.
His latest legal battle has brought him to Anaheim, where Diamond is suing for the right of strippers to perform what are euphemistically called “lap dances,” during which women entice from just a few wiggles away, sometimes even suggestively touching the patrons.
Anaheim officials have banned such entertainment, contending that it borders on prostitution, and have issued citations at Anaheim’s Sahara Theater.
“This is a very hot issue in Orange County right now,” said Diamond, who believes cities do not have the right to regulate what goes on inside nude dance clubs.
The 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana is considering the dispute, and a decision is expected by year’s end.
Fighting for the liberty to watch women undress is an at-times unpopular cause, but Diamond is not alone in believing that banning adult entertainment will lead to more widespread restrictions. Eugene Volokh, a UCLA professor specializing in 1st Amendment issues, noted that literary works such as James Joyce’s “Ulysses” were once considered pornographic.
“It’s a slippery slope once you head down that path,” Volokh said. “On the other hand . . . these businesses do have adverse effects on neighboring properties.”
A Los Angeles native, Diamond regularly works 12-hour days, frequently skipping lunch, but he rarely misses a Los Angeles Clippers game.
Married for the last 30 years to his high school sweetheart, Diamond doesn’t smoke or drink, not even coffee. And, he points out, he doesn’t frequent adult businesses in his spare time.
His love of the law developed early in his childhood, when he petitioned Los Angeles City Hall to do something about the dog feces littering his yard, where he and his friends regularly played football. Diamond also found another way to get even with offending pet owners.
“I would collect [it] and leave it on their doorsteps,” he said.
As a young adult, he mixed his penchant for play with a driving propensity to challenge authority.
The anti-smoking fanatic has used squirt guns to drench lit cigarettes still dangling from the lips of unwary smokers.
While attending law school, Diamond campaigned for student body president on an unusual platform: the banishing of all fraternities and sororities. (He was a member of Phi Sigma Delta. He lost.)
Diamond went on to dabble in state politics, running three times for a California Assembly seat as an environmentalist. He lost every time, but there were some victories.
While stumping, Diamond noticed that incumbents were always listed first on the ballot. He filed suit and won, resulting in the state’s current policy of using a lottery to decide placement of candidates’ names.
That triumph backfired, however, when names were chosen for ballot placement during Diamond’s third Assembly run. He was last.
He began representing the adult entertainment industry in 1969 after answering a newspaper advertisement seeking “a young aggressive lawyer to fight for justice.”
Diamond took on the case of James Perrine, who had been denied a permit to operate his East Los Angeles adult bookstore because of a prior obscenity conviction. Diamond lost the early rounds, but the California Supreme Court ruled “it is constitutionally impermissible to deny an application . . . solely on the ground that the applicant has suffered a prior criminal conviction.”
He has since won several precedent-setting cases. One was a 1989 suit against the city of Stanton, resulting in a court ruling that city ordinances made it impossible for adult entertainment to operate there. Westminster officials lost a 1995 case to Diamond, who argued that they broke the law by rejecting an application for an adult cabaret.
Once, courtroom observers recalled, Diamond sprang to his tiptoes and pirouetted in a Los Angeles County Superior Court to underscore his philosophical argument on the definition of art.
“What is dancing?” he queried the jurors, who looked on, stunned, as Diamond answered his own question by twirling about on one foot in his suit and tie, arms held high. “Is this dancing to you?” Diamond asked again while prancing about.
“Some will say ‘yes’ and others will say ‘no,’ and who’s right?” Diamond recalled telling the jurors during his closing argument. “It’s essentially an art form . . . and that’s what these nude dancers are doing. They’re not immoral people. I truly believe that they’re engaging in an art form.”
Diamond won the case.
