SANTA CRUZ, CA- The University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) hosted and provided "major funding" to a homosexual student conference that exposed college and high school students to hard-core pornography, sadomasochism, and even a workshop on "Sex Workers" led by a prostitute.

The February 6-8 conference -- titled "Exposed!" -- featured a nighttime performance by self-described "Pleasure Activist" Annie Sprinkle, in which she played clips showing close-up shots from her various X-rated videos. She also endorsed the "sex industry" and titled one performance segment, "Why Whores are My Heroes."

"Exposed!" was organized by the University of California Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Association (UCLGBTA), and received "major funding" through the University of California at Santa Cruz’s Student Affairs Division. The setting for the "Exposed!" conference was the picturesque campus of UCSC’s Porter College on California’s Monterrey Bay. Porter College is also listed as a major funder of "Exposed!"

Other UCSC colleges are listed as giving money or in-kind donations to the conference. The Human Rights Campaign and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force also sponsored the event, which drew almost 400 people.

Santa Cruz Says ‘Educational’

When questioned about the more radical presentations at the "Exposed!" conference, UCSC spokewoman Elizabeth Irwin told Campus Report the event provided an "educational opportunity."

Irwin said "Exposed!" featured "a number of very serious, academically rooted discussions about issues of sexuality and especially, human rights." She also disputed the idea that public money funded the project, arguing that assistance came from special funds and not taxpayer or student money.

UCSC enjoys a reputation for leftist politics that is almost unparalleled in academia. In a recent article in the homosexual newspaper San Francisco Frontiers, openly gay student Stuart Rosenstein said, "The exciting thing for me on this campus is that gay issues are celebrated here; everyone’s out and it’s very empowering. And not only do we offer gay classes, it’s incorporated into all courses."

Educational Workshops?

Celebrate, indeed. Perhaps by current academic standards, the "Exposed!" sessions could be called "educational," but outside observers might doubt Irwin’s benign characterization. Among the workshops offered at the conference were "Danzine: Sex Workers Start Their Own Publication and Organization," led by an actual prostitute, Teresa Dulce. Another was "Town, Gown, and Tea Rooms: The University and Public Homosexual Sex," led by UC-Berkeley researcher P.N. Fucella, who advocated and admitted to practicing anonymous bathroom sex on campus.

Among films shown at "Exposed!" were Blood Sisters: Leather Dykes & Sadomasochism and Daddy and the Muscle Academy. The latter film, which was shown during the day (i.e., as a "workshop" option), tells the story of the late artist Tom of Finland—who specialized in drawing pornographic seduction scenes of homosexual musclemen with oversized genitalia.

Prostitute ‘Rights’?

For each session, the nearly 400 attendees at the "Exposed!" conference were given the choice to attend one of several available workshops. On Saturday morning, Dulce addressed an audience of 15 on the topic of "sex workers" organizing for their rights. Dulce, a UC-Santa Cruz graduate, is the publisher of Danzine, a "nonjudgmental" monthly newsletter for "ladies in the sex industry (including dancers, phone-sex operators, prostitutes, fantasy booth workers, escorts, and lingerie models)." Its motto is "an exciting monthly for ladies in the biz!"

Dulce told of the struggles facing women in the sex trade. "I prefer to think of the sex industry as more of a labor issue than a moral one," she said, adding that she now divides her time between nude dancing and one-on-one, sex-for-money encounters.

Next door to Dulce in an adjacent classroom, students learned about how to become effective activists. Becky Dinwoodie, a staffer with the Human Rights Campaign, the leading homosexual lobby group based in Washington, DC, led a session on "Elections 101—Registering Voters and Getting Fair-Minded Candidates Elected."

A ‘Sprinkle’ of Smut

Serving as the opening night’s entertainment was Annie Sprinkle. Her name might be familiar to some as one of the sexually radical "artists" whose controversial work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. (Several years ago, Sprinkle received federal monies for an act featuring, among other things, her urinating on stage.)

Sprinkle packed the Porter College dining hall for her performance, which was essentially a retelling of her pornographic exploits over the years. Midway through the program, after narrating some slides, she began showing snippets of her pornographic videos on the large screen behind the stage. The predominately student audience punctuated her narration of life as a porn-star with laughter. Behind her played scenes such as orgies and "below the equator" close-ups. All the while, a camera crew from 60 Minutes recorded the stage show.

The program for the conference gave a minimum age of 18 to enter the Sprinkle show, but this reporter entered the room shortly after her program began, and "security," if there was any, was lax. An organizer for "Exposed!" said that some high school students attended the conference; so it is probable that some minors attended Sprinkle’s pornographic performance.

Following the videos, Sprinkle returned to her slides—including one segment on "Why Whores are My Heroes." Sprinkle then held a 20-minute "Q & A" session in which she fielded mostly polite questions from the audience. At one point, she advocated pornography as a career. She said she had contracted sexually transmitted diseases but never AIDS, and said a case of hemorrhoids may have spared her from that as they deterred her from having anal sex.

The ‘Transgender’ Agenda?

The many "transgender" oriented discussions at the conference reflect the newfound respect for this latest "minority" in homosexual circles. "Transgenders" in the "gay" lexicon are people who feel ill at ease in their birth sex, and strive to live as the opposite sex. They range from cross-dressers to men and women who go through expensive operations to have their sexual organs surgically transformed.

In her keynote speech, Elizabeth Birch of the Human Rights Campaign respectfully included the "transgendered" when mentioning "gays, lesbians and bisexuals," and said that people "struggling around gender" have a lot to teach their skeptical countrymen.

Teach they did at the Santa Cruz student conference. At one afternoon panel, female-to-male "transgender" activist Loren Cameron—looking very much like a man—described "his" experience evolving from an unsatisfied female to a post-double-mastectomy "male." Cameron’s photo exhibit chronicling "his" (and others’) body changes hung on the walls where "he" spoke. As approximately 20 mostly-young people listened intently, Cameron told how "he" had decided against getting an operation for a fake prosthetic penis, and instead relied upon hormones to artificially enlarge his God-given clitoris which, "he" said, serves as a penis.

Advocating Bathroom Sex

During the same time period on Saturday afternoon, the "Exposed!" organizers offered a choice between a film about lesbian sadomasochists and a discussion about public bathroom sex, known in homosexual slang as "tearoom" sex. In the latter session, Berkeley researcher Fucella spent the first few minutes of his presentation gauging the audience’s attitude toward such anonymous sexual activity.

Once Fucella ascertained that sentiment in the room favored furtive sexual liaisons, he opened up and said that, in the past, he practiced bathroom sex frequently at Berkeley. Fucella went on to discuss some of the logistics of anonymous bathroom sex—e.g., that words are rarely spoken in the encounters.

In the audience was Tomas Almaguer, a homosexual professor at the University of Michigan who would give the closing speech at the conference the following morning. Almaguer said he practiced tearoom sex and defended it as "a wonderful recruiting ground" for homosexuals. The University of Michigan was recently forced to install steel partitions between bathroom stalls to curb such practices.

Apparently buoyed by the frank talk about behavior, which is controversial even in homosexual circles, Almaguer mentioned his bathroom sexual forays in the closing keynote speech the next day.

Among the final set of workshops was "Sex and the Spirit." The instructor, Rob Roy Woodman of UC-Davis, said that he had experienced an anonymous sexual encounter at a homosexual bathhouse that was so powerful it was "spiritual" in nature.

Mr. LaBarbera, the editor of the Lambda Report on Homosexuality, is the founder of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (www.americansfortruth.com).