UW In Uproar Over Rejection Of Ex-Porn Star's Appearance

Former porn star Annie Sprinkle has caused a sensation at the University of Washington even though she hasn't taken off a single stitch.

The student government has refused to pay $7,970 for Sprinkle, a performance artist, who was scheduled to appear as part of Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Awareness Days in May. Supporters of Sprinkle's appearance charged student-government leaders with homophobia.

In her show, Sprinkle strips and invites members of the audience to view her cervix with a speculum. However, Charles Drabkin of the Gay, Bisexual and Lesbian Student Commission, which invited her, said Sprinkle planned to only lecture and show slides at the UW.

The refusal to fund her appearance has captured the attention of an aide to California Congressman Robert Dornan, who called for pro-family groups to support the student government's action, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington.

In a memo Wednesday to the Traditional Values Coalition and the Christian Coalition, Dornan aide Kent Patton wrote that supporters of homosexuality "have raised an uproar and brought in the ACLU. The student conservatives are getting no public support from any quarter."

Patton said he finds nothing wrong with Sprinkle's performance because he has not seen it.

"My complaint is not what an artist may want to do," Patton said. "My complaint is with those on university campuses who will sing of liberalism but strike out in intolerance. The diverse voices on university campuses are coming from the right, not the left."

Doug Honig, public-education director for the state's ACLU, said the office received a complaint about the student government and asked to see more material regarding the refusal.

"There are laws that protect art that is cutting edge and that is provocative, making people think and question value. That's part of art," he said. "It's a shame when people threaten to prosecute for something like that. It suppresses art."

UW student-body President Parag Gheewala said funding was rejected because of the high cost of the appearance and concern about breaking laws.

"I'm being called everything from a censor to a homophobe," Gheewala said. "I'm not going to cave into name calling. I'm a libertarian."

Sprinkle gained national notoriety in 1990 when Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California, in the midst of a funding flap over the National Endowment for the Arts, cited Sprinkle's one-woman show as an example of tax dollars being "flushed into the sewer of fetishism, depravity and pornography." Sprinkle, however, did not receive any NEA funding.

In March, the UW student government voted to approve the funding but rescinded the vote after board members voiced concern that Sprinkle's appearance might violate state and local pornography laws.