Update: Sevier mistakenly named Tony Roswarski, in his capacity as mayor of the good people of Lafayette, Indiana, instead of Mayor-President Joel Robideaux of Lafayette, Louisiana, in his lawsuit.
Mark Christopher Sevier (a.k.a. Chris Sevier, a.k.a. Mark Sevier, a.k.a. Chris Severe), an attorney from Nashville who once claimed to be sexually attracted to his own computer- a “machinist” is how he described his sexual orientation- in an attempt to intervene in a series of same-sex marriage cases, filed suit against Teresa Elberson, the director of the Lafayette Parish Library, Gov. John Bel Edwards, and Attorney General Jeff Landry in an effort to prohibit the library from hosting a scheduled reading event featuring drag queens, according to a report from KADN, a Lafayette affiliate of Fox.
The Advertiser also reported on Sevier’s lawsuit, which was filed on behalf of two religious organizations, Warriors for Christ and Special Forces of Liberty.
But so far, the local media hasn’t picked up on exactly who they’re dealing with.
The upcoming Drag Queen Story Time event has been the subject of intense controversy, almost entirely due to the bizarre decision by Mayor-President Joel Robideaux to issue an inflammatory statement on Facebook denouncing the library. On Tuesday night, the Lafayette City-Parish Council hosted a marathon meeting to consider a non-binding resolution against the library. (Neither the council nor the mayor-president have any authority over the parish library). Ultimately, only three members signed onto the resolution; the other six abstained, and the resolution failed.
Chris Sevier is a notorious legal troll who made national headlines five years ago after attempting to intervene in a same-sex marriage case in Florida, under the pretense of representing “other minority sexual orientation groups,” specifically people attracted to their computers. He has filed similar cases in Tennessee, Utah, and Texas.
In his motion for intervention in Florida, Sevier declared to the court:
Recently, I purchased an Apple computer. The computer was sold to me without filters to block out pornography. I was not provided with any warning by Apple that pornography was highly addictive and could alter my reward cycle by the manufacturer. Over time, I began preferring sex with my computer over sex with real women. Naturally, I ‘fell in love’ with my computer and preferred having sex with it over all other persons or things, as a result of classic conditioning upon orgasm.
A year prior, he had sued Apple for his porn addiction. Last year, he attempted to convince the government to mandate porn-filters on every electronic device connected to the internet.
Among other things, as The Daily Beast reported in an extensive 2017 profile, Sevier has also previously been charged with stalking a 17-year-old girl and country star Josh Rich and was convicted of assaulting his father-in-law in an incident that sent his 7-month-old son to the emergency room. After briefly relocating to Texas, he was sentenced to 58 days in jail for misdemeanor assault after attempting to abduct his son, who he is now prohibited from contacting.
His license to practice law in Tennessee was suspended; the state’s bar association cited “mental illness.”
It is unclear whether Sevier can actually practice law in Louisiana, but this isn’t the first time he has made news in the state. In 2013, he sued President Obama, among others, after A&E canceled the television show “Duck Dynasty.”
In his lawsuit against the Lafayette Parish Library, Sevier argues that the decision to host Drag Queen Story Time amounts to a state-sponsored endorsement of religion and violates the Supreme Court’s three-part Lemon Test, first articulated in the 1968 case Lemon v. Kurtzman.
He is hoping that the court will believe that drag queens are all “secular humanists” and that secular humanism is a religion. The government cannot pass a law that advances or inhibits any particular religion or results in excessive government entanglement with religion.
Sevier had been making the same argument in a same-sex marriage case in Texas. Ironically, the first prong of the Lemon Test is that “the statute must have a secular legislative purpose” (emphasis added).
No court has ever declared secular humanism to be a religion, though the religious right has occasionally argued that Footnote 11 in the 1961 case Torcaso v. Watkins, which concerned tax-exemptions for various groups, to be authoritative.
Either way, there is no such thing as the Church of Drag Queens.
Regardless, Sevier’s case in Lafayette- much like the other cases he has filed- is meritless, but it does underscore one thing: In issuing his statement against the library reading event, Joel Robideaux effectively announced that Lafayette was open for bigots. It shouldn’t be surprising that they’ve shown up.
Props to Jezebel for the featured image.