A Hard-Core Fighter for Adult Businesses

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 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 he often wins.

This is how Diamond earns his living, and a reputation among his critics as one of Orange County’s--and Southern California’s--leading defenders of adult businesses.

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 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 during 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.”

Though Diamond is hailed by his clients as a modern-day freedom fighter, critics say he is hiding behind the U.S. Constitution, using it to defend an industry that has been blamed for a variety of social ills: sex crimes, exploitation of women and deterioration of neighborhoods.

“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.”

Diamond’s success, critics say, means families, hard-working homeowners and others suffer.

“I say to those like Mr. Diamond and the people he represents, ‘Hey, you have your rights, but so do I, I have 1st Amendment rights too, to say I don’t want you here,”’ said former Fountain Valley Mayor and Councilman George Scott, who led his city to rewrite ordinances aimed at restricting adult businesses.

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 Richard D. 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 from as far away 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 thanks to Diamond’s work.

His latest legal battle has brought him to Anaheim, where Diamond is suing for the right of strippers to perform 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 it borders on prostitution, and have doled out citations at the 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 a nude dance club.

The 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana is considering the dispute; a decision is expected by year’s end.

Fighting for the liberty to watch women undress is a wildly 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 30 years to his high school sweetheart, Diamond doesn’t smoke and shuns alcohol and coffee. And, he points out, he doesn’t frequent adult businesses in his spare time.

His love of the law developed in early 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 recalled.

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. A former college professor named an annual award in honor of Diamond’s wit, to be bestowed on the student with the best limerick written about a court case studied in class.

“He was a character. He was very funny,” recalled UCLA law professor Kenneth Graham.

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 the election.)

Diamond went on to dabble in state politics, thrice running for a California Assembly seat as an environmentalist. He lost each time, but there were some victories.

While stumping, Diamond noticed 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.

Constitutional law has taken Diamond to all the nooks and crannies of the legal realm.

In the 1970s, he backed an initiative creating the state’s campaign-finance disclosure law and the Fair Political Practices Commission. His interest in the environment led to a ban on offshore drilling in Los Angeles County. He has defended criminal suspects, such as an Altadena mortician charged with using oleander to poison a business rival.

“That was a guy who was facing the gas chamber,” Diamond said. “I had the [victim’s] body exhumed and they found no oleander. . . . The case was dismissed.”

He began representing the adult entertainment industry in 1969, upon 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 previous obscenity conviction. Diamond lost the early rounds, but the state Supreme Court ruled that “it is constitutionally impermissible to deny an application . . . solely on the ground that the applicant has suffered a prior criminal conviction.”

Diamond has since won several precedent-setting cases against Orange County cities. In one, a 1989 suit against Stanton, a court ruled that the city’s ordinances made it impossible for adult entertainment to operate there. Westminster lost a 1995 case to Diamond, who argued that the city broke the law by rejecting an application for an adult cabaret.

Municipalities can take steps to limit where such businesses are located, but cannot bar them outright or pass so many restrictions that they are effectively forced out.

Many recognize that Diamond is just doing his job--even though they disagree with him. “Somebody has to represent these businesses,” Anaheim Vice Sgt. Steve Walker said.

But residents, business owners and city officials often find themselves astonished by a legal system that hands victory to Diamond and other adult entertainment attorneys.

A cluster of adult bookstores on Garden Grove Boulevard is a magnet for prostitution, drugs and crime, Councilman Ken Maddox said. Residents have found used condoms, hypodermic needles and pornographic magazines strewn on lawns where their children play.

Residents have tried protests, barricades to deter cruising, and neighborhood patrols. They recently succeeded in passing a law aimed at displacing the bookstores. Diamond plans to challenge it.

“The residents in the area have had to give up a lot,” said Wilson, a local activist and an outspoken critic of Diamond’s work. “They’re fighting for their neighborhoods.”

Diamond acknowledges such concerns but says there are already laws on the books to deal with drugs, prostitution and other crimes without chipping away at the First Amendment.

It’s an argument he makes tirelessly, time and time again before judges and juries.

Once, courtroom observers recalled, Diamond sprung to his tiptoes and pirouetted in a Los Angeles courtroom 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?” he 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.

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Profile: Roger Jon Diamond

Hometown: Los Angeles

Residence: Pacific Palisades

Age: 54

Occupation: Attorney, constitutional law

Law degree: UCLA, 1966

Personal: Wife of 30 years, Fran; two grown children and one grandchild

Attitude: “I like challenging authority, and the law is my tool.”

What They Say About Him:

* “He’s a very vocal advocate for his clients, one of the best in what he does. There’s no doubt he’s passionate about the law, [especially] the 1st Amendment.”--Dick Jones, Westminster city attorney

* “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. I have no respect for him.”--Bob Wilson, opponent of sex-oriented businesses in Garden Grove

Sources: Roger Diamond, Times reports

Researched by THAO HUA / Los Angeles Times