Posted on 09/08/2001 4:35:32 AM PDT by Church Lady
By TOM LANGHORNE Staff WriterHe insists that adults should be able to visit prostitutes and disseminate pornography to other adults without government interference.
He freely admits that he has watched scores of movies whose titles cannot be printed in this newspaper, and has patronized the adult establishments he represents in court.
And he says he gladly will take his own two sons and daughter into such places as soon as they turn 18, if they want to go.
A self-described "pure libertarian," Spartanburg attorney Rod Tullis has become the legal representative of choice for adult club owners and employees, accused prostitutes and sex offenders in the 7th judicial circuit.
"He appears to have cornered the market on sex and vice cases in Spartanburg and Cherokee counties," says attorney Andy Johnston, a longtime friend who shares office space with Tullis at 184 N. Daniel Morgan Ave.
"Rod has considerable expertise in this area, which he gained through scholarly research and experience in handling these types of cases," Johnston said.
Tullis, 42, says the philosophical underpinning of his practice can be traced to his youth as the child of '60s-era civil rights activists.
In the mid-60s, Dewey and Kittie Tullis sent 7-year-old Rodman and his older brother to join a young female friend as the first three black students to attend Pine Street Elementary School.
"We were test students to integrate Spartanburg County schools, so I learned at an early age the importance of freedom," said Tullis, who went on to become the county's first black prosecutor in 1988. "Sending us to that school at that time was an act of courage. They put their money where their mouths were.
"My parents taught me not to be close-minded or judgmental."
Dewey Tullis, now 73, helped integrate the first lunch counter in Spartanburg. Tullis and other activists worked to integrate several restaurants and the YMCA of Spartanburg.
Kittie Tullis, now a bail bondsman, recalls being shot at in the '60s and harassed by the Ku Klux Klan.
"So what people do now is no big deal to me, as long as they're not doing it in the streets or bothering me," Mrs. Tullis said. "I'm very proud of Rod."
Just as his parents fought in the frontline of the civil rights movement of the '60s, Rod Tullis sees himself as a modern civil rights crusader -- but the persecuted minority whose rights he defends don't get confused with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
"Everyone deserves a defense, but that doesn't mean they deserve my defense," says Solicitor Trey Gowdy of Tullis' clientele. "I'd rather be poor than make my money that way."
It is a sentiment Tullis has heard before, but one he believes is rooted in stereotypes and self-righteousness.
"Most of the folks I represent are just plain folks," he says. "They don't have horns or tails. A lot of these businesses are family-owned, married folks with the grandmother involved in the business."
A defense attorney for 15 years, Tullis said he began taking sex and vice cases in the early '90s. Many of the cases flowed to him, he said, because other lawyers were afraid of the "stigma" associated with them.
"Going against the grain is kind of in my blood," he said.
Tullis acknowledged that he has defended one pedophile who had a mental defect, but he said anyone else he has represented who was charged with sexually victimizing a child already knew the victim.
Some of his clients charged with rape actually are teen-age boys who were having consensual sex with their girlfriends, Tullis said.
Tullis' office, located just a stone's throw from the Spar-tanburg County courthouse, is littered with adult literature and videocassettes -- evidence in his cases.
In one corner is an SKS Chinese assault rifle, which Tullis made a point of buying the day he heard then-President Bill Clinton advocate a ban on such weapons.
"Who are they to tell me I can't own one?" he said in a fit of libertarian pique.
Rifling through one of the boxes, Tullis produced literature supporting his view that pornography does not contribute to sex crimes.
"Everywhere in the world, there are actually fewer incidents of sexual violence in neighborhoods where sexually oriented materials are readily available," he said. "(Pornography) might be a healthy outlet that would actually deter sex crimes.
"Listen, what is 'obscene,' anyway? I've seen a bunch of triple-X movies that I didn't think were obscene, but (the movie) 'Hannibal' was the most obscene, disgusting thing I've ever seen, with all its gratuitous violence and unnecessary killings."
Beverly Jones is unmoved by Tullis' arguments. As an assistant solicitor under then-Solicitor Holman Gossett, Jones squared off against Tullis in dozens of sex cases.
"In most of these cases, law enforcement acted because it was receiving complaints from the community," Jones said. "People were offended by sexually oriented businesses, and it is the community who decides what's appropriate in their neighborhoods."
Jones, now a prosecutor in the 16th Circuit Solicitor's Office in Union County, conceded that Tullis was a worthy adversary.
"Rod is effective at what he does," she said. "He would say, 'Why are they -- law enforcement -- devoting so much manpower to this?' I grew to expect that one, and it always put us on the defensive a little bit -- but again, it was being done because the community wanted it done."
Contradicting her former courtroom foe, Jones said pornography is unquestionably a destructive force in American society.
"It's been my experience that, a remarkable number of times, the perpetrator (in sex cases) is someone who uses pornography," she said. "I don't think desensitizing people to a sense of what is normal in human sexuality is a good thing."
Tullis, however, is unrepentant. He said using his legal education to defend people accused of vice and sex crimes is just as honorable as any other exercise of law.
"I believe in God, and God made us as sexual creatures," he said. "He could have made us asexual, but God did not do that. Sex is OK. It's OK!
"As soon as we stop acting so juvenile about it, some of these perceived problems will go away."
Tom Langhorne can be reached at 582-4511, Ext. 7221, or tom.langhorne@shj.com.
I sure hope IT doesn't come to that.
I guess he's going to be watched mighty closely.
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