Sexual Outlaws: The Prohibition of Pleasure

Panelists

Diana Adams
Diana Adams, Esq. is a sexual civil rights attorney who believes that “family” extends beyond the traditional nuclear family of Mom, Dad, 2 kids, and a dog to include other loving, mutually supporting families. Ms. Adams is active in the marriage reform movement, fighting to unbundle our rights from marriage, so that single people, unmarried couples, polyamorous people, LGBTQ people who are not permitted to marry, and intentional communities are not legally disadvantaged in terms of their taxes or ability to form family ties. Diana is one of the contributors to the “State of Sexual Freedom in the United States, 2011 Report.”

Ajamu Baraka
An internationally recognized leader of the emerging human rights movement in the U.S., Ajamu Baraka has been in the forefront of the effort to apply the international human rights framework to domestic social justice advocacy for more than 20 years. Among the many honors he has received, including the 2011 “Vicki” Sexual Freedom Award, Baraka was honored by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as one of 300 human rights defenders from around the world who were brought together at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Jay Carmona
Jay Carmona has worked as a grassroots community organizer, trainer, and strategist since 2000. She has worked on online grassroots strategy with groups such as GetEQUAL, and Standing on the Side of Love. Jay co-founded One Struggle One Fight, an LGBT Organization dedicated to fighting intersecting oppressions. Last year she was nominated for the New Organizing Institute’s Most Valuable Organizer Award for her work on the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), a bill to protect LGBT Americans from workplace discrimination. She specializes in the intersection of online and offline grassroots advocacy.

CJ Ortuno
As Executive Director of Florida’s SAVE Dade, CJ implements strategic advocacy in order to achieve their mission: to promote, protect, and defend equality for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. CJ continues to build measurable political power for the LGBT community in local, state, and federal government. Most recently under CJ’s leadership, SAVE Dade’s advocacy resulted in the safe passage of a county-wide LGBT inclusive anti-bullying policy and for the first time in the state, a plan to sway state law makers into considering people who are LGBT people as a “community of interest” in it’s decennial redistricting process.

Carmen Vazquez
One of the recipients of the 2011 “Vicki” Sexual Freedom Awards, Carmen was the Founding Director of the Women’s Building in San Francisco, helped found the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center in San Francisco, and the LGBT Health & Human Services Network, a coalition of over 55 organizations and groups in New York advocating for LGBT Health and Human Services. She was a founder and principal author of Causes in Common (a national coalition of Reproductive Justice and LGBT Liberation activists) during her tenure as Director of Public Policy at the LGBR Community Center in NYC. Carmen has been honored for her activism and community intellectual contributions by the City University of New York School of Law with an Honorary Law degree in 2005. The Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College in Massachusetts Voices of Feminism Project conducted an oral history of her in 2005 and her papers are archived at the Sophia Smith Archives.

Lawrence G. Walters
Lawrence G. Walters, Esq., heads up Walters Law Group, which represents clients across the country in cases involving free speech and erotic expression. He presently serves as General Program Counsel for Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance, and is a member of the Advisory Council. He regularly comments in the national media on issues relating to censorship of erotic expression, and has appeared on numerous television news programs including Dateline, The View, 20/20, the O’Reilly Factor, Dr. Phil, Good Morning America, The Today Show, and the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Moderators

Patti Britton, Ph.D.
Dr. Patti is Past-President of the American Association for Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT); Clinical Fellow, American Academy of Clinical Sexologists; Diplomate, American Board of Sexology; AASECT Certified Sexuality Educator; Member of the American College of Sexologists; Member of the Society for Scientific Study of Sexuality; Associate Professor of Sexology, for the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality; and is Director/faculty for the Sexuality Certificate Track at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology/Westwood, and co-founder of Feminists for Free Expression. Dr. Patti is co-founder of Sex Coach U, the world’s premier credentialing and training institute on sex coaching.

Ricci J. Levy
In 2002, Ricci Levy helped found Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance, (then Woodhull Freedom Foundation), an organization whose mission is to affirm sexual freedom as a fundamental human right. As the Executive Director and President of both the Foundation and the Federation, she has been instrumental in Woodhull’s growing leadership in the sexual freedom movement. Ricci has testified before Congress and has shared the mission of Woodhull in the media, at conferences and in dialogs with legislators and decision makers all over the country. Ms. Levy serves as Co-Chair of the US Human Rights Network Sexual Rights and Gender Justice working group, as well as on the Steering Committee of the Free Expression Network (FEN, the Advocacy Advisory Committee of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT), and the Education Committee of the US Human Rights Network.