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Those who know him shake their head at the idea that Thomas has any preoccupation with porn films. At Yale Law School in the early 1970s, Lovida Coleman, now an attorney in private practice in Washington, belonged to a group of students, which Thomas was also part of, who convened in the dining room at 7 a.m. She vividly recalls the morning when Thomas described the plot of a pornographic film that she believes was Behind the Green Door. "We were all laughing hysterically," says Coleman. "He was talking about how absurd it was." Moreover, says an old friend, his methods of flirtation before he remarried were hardly those of a Lothario. "Clarence's idea of a date was to call up a woman and ask if he can come over and have a beer and talk," says the friend. "He wants the woman to make the first move."
It is just one of the ironies of his situation that while heading the EEOC, Thomas strongly urged the Justice Department to back the commission's sexual- harassment guidelines in arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court. But while he strongly denies it, Thomas has been accused of dragging his feet on the 1983 case of an EEOC attorney who was accused of making unwelcome sexual advances to several women in his office. After an internal investigation found the charges to have substance, Thomas urged that the attorney be fired, but the dismissal never took place and the accused man eventually retired.
Thomas' defenders insist that he could act decisively in dealing with cases of sexual harassment. Rozzi cites one case of a male field supervisor under her supervision who she felt had been unfairly charged with harassment. "I tried to convince Thomas that I didn't feel this gentleman was guilty, but he wouldn't listen," she says. "He downgraded the person two grades, which is a very severe punishment." If Thomas is the man his friends say he is, that penalty might have been pure justice. If he is the man Anita Hill says he is, it was pure hypocrisy.