TAMPA — The king of contradictions wears a crown: a white visor adorned by the silhouette of a supine purple nude woman. It is the logo of his business, the Mons Venus, one of the nation’s most famous strip clubs.

But Kathy Fountain, host of Fox 13’s Your Turn show, prompts Joe Redner to take it off. Viewers won’t see his eyes when they search for the truth.

Show time: “Is Joe really gay? Is he trying a new legal strategy?” Fountain says to the camera. “Let’s ask him.”

Callers are split. For decades, Redner has been a divisive character — charismatic to some, revolting to others. He’s a local Larry Flynt, who seems to float between running for public office and suing it. He stole headlines again last week when he said he was gay in his federal lawsuit against Hillsborough County commissioners, who recently banned the county from acknowledging or participating in gay-pride events.

Is the twice-married man who claims to have had 25 sex partners — none male — and five children from four women gay? Or is he simply trying to use the spotlight as part of a quest to gain legitimacy, public office and a more influential legacy? Finding out is never dull.

He became gay “recently,” he says coyly during the TV interview.

“I want to experiment,” he tells viewers. “The right man is going to come along.”

“I think Joe is using this as a political ploy to put himself back in the limelight,” caller “Mike in Winter Haven” says. “He’s not even giving you any straight answers to anything.”

No way a strip club owner is gay, another caller says.

“You’re one of the people who think the world is 6,000 years old,” Redner responds.

“I believe you’re going to hell,” the caller said.

“You just proved it!” Redner said.

Time’s up. Cameras retreat. Before Redner leaves the stage, a few want pictures with him.

Like a celebrity — or is it a politician? — he happily obliges.

He never left the limelight. A search of the St. Petersburg Times’ archives show his name mentioned 939 different times since 1987.

He stirred controversy by asserting on the radio that sexual repression causes sex crimes. He let a Christian group put a “Father, forgive them . . . For they know not what they do” billboard above one of his clubs.

“I don’t give lip service to freedom of speech,” he said then. “I believe in it, I really do. And I figured there’d be some publicity involved.”

He created the public access television show Voice of Freedom, initially, to tout his views on pornography. Many more issues are discussed now.

One of the city’s most litigious residents, he donated $1,000 to the Hillsborough County Law Library, where a study carrel has a brass plaque with his name on it.

Once a heavy drug and alcohol user, he touted a new diet and workout regime in 1994 by saying, “I’m as clean as you get. You can’t get any cleaner than I am.” He dared then-Mayor Dick Greco to enforce a lap dance ban with a message outside the Mons: “Greco. You Coward. Enforce Your Ordinance.”

He scared the city with plans to create the adult-use supercenter Sex World in 1990. The city blocked him, and he rented the space to the Internal Revenue Service in 1998, though he closely aligns with Libertarians.

He was arrested for protesting President Bush’s appearance at a rally. He sued the Secret Service.

He demonstrated at a gay-pride rally with a sign taunting Commissioner Ronda Storms to teach her child what “homophobe” means.

At the blocklong Hyde Park gym he owns, Xtreme Total Health & Fitness, Redner, a vegan, pedaled away on a stationary bike during a regimented twohour daily workout.

He usually reads both local papers while exercising. He said he learned a long time ago that cooperating with the media at least bought him “input.”

He said he’s worth $25 million. He admits he gets bored, which is why he said he combs through the paper daily looking for causes to back.

“I have to be entertained and stimulated all the time,” he said. “Repetition is boring to me.”

He admits he’s an antagonist.

Florida records show he’s been arrested 65 times, but he has said it’s really more than 150, many for violating nude laws and a 1983 cocaine possession.

He said he doesn’t purposefully try to spite elected officials, except for the conservative Storms, whom he is always looking to counter.

He said he needs “resistance” in his life.

He will tell you he’s a “secular humanist,” not an atheist. He is wary of government regulation.

He said he avoids anything that hurts others.

He has long maintained the Mons doesn’t objectify women but helps the down-on-their-luck gain an income and self-esteem.

Storms disagrees, having long called him an exploiter of women. She amplified on that last week in response to Redner’s statement he is gay.

“If it’s true, it explains his misogyny,” Storms said. “If it’s not true, it goes to his integrity. Both of those are bad for Joe Redner.”

What Redner, 65, wants worse than anything, is an elected seat like Storms’. He has failed multiple times. He said he will run for the commission or City Council this year, if needed.

“I want to get elected. I want to get elected,” he said. “I’ve got everything I want. I don’t want airplanes. I don’t want jewelry. I don’t want to play golf. I don’t want to fish.”

Inside Redner Enterprises, a rectangular industrial office behind a Home Depot, computer printouts of news stories and pictures line the walls. An opinion column Redner wrote is blown up. Someone wrote “Scary!” above a picture of Promise Keepers with raised hands. A quote from Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi states: “First they ignored us. Then they laughed at us. Then they fought us. Then we won.”

Redner often raises mainstream political issues. But, politicians say, the public can’t get past the perception of him as a smut peddler.

During an interview, Redner repeatedly says commissioners are in the pocket of developers, ignoring a classroom crunch that could be alleviated if growth paid more of its costs. He says commissioners pander too much to their base by picking on easy targets such as strip clubs or gay pride.

“Education,” he said, bringing up another favorite topic. “Government needs to educate everybody, and all the other s— will go away.”

(Redner got his GED in jail.)

He rails on the deficit and Iraq war.

What Redner is doing is obvious, said Bob Buckhorn, former Tampa City Council member and target of Redner’s attacks when they shared a campaign trail in 1999.

“Clearly over the last couple of years, he has attempted to change the public perception of himself,” Buckhorn said. “He’s clearly trying to widen his appeal. Whether voters are going to believe it or accept it, as of late, they have not. But you have to give him credit for trying.”

To a degree, Buckhorn said, not only is Redner’s activism genuine but well directed on several issues.

“That doesn’t negate how he makes his money or his lifestyle choices,” said Buckhorn, who led the charge on the city’s ordinance banning lap dancing.

County Commissioner Thomas Scott, a pastor, said Redner’s wide margins of defeat — including a loss against him — show voters don’t take him seriously and don’t like what he stands for.

“I’m praying for Joe Redner,” said the Rev. Forrest Pollock of Bell Shoals Baptist Church. “And there would be nothing greater in my mind than for him to know Jesus Christ as his savior. Let me just leave it at that. Boy, we pray for him, and we’d love to see him have a change of life, and we see no evidence of that.”

Hanging over everything Redner does, just like the visor he wears during media opportunities, is the Mons Venus on N Dale Mabry Highway. Like his nude dancers, he says he has nothing to hide. Nor does he plan to change.

“There’s people who tell me, `Joe, if you sell the Mons and get out of the business, you’re my man,’ ” he said.

“But what kind of rationale is that? Do you cut off the nose to spite the hand?”