LAS VEGAS, NV — While the vast majority of the 2007 Adult Entertainment Expo focuses on the fantasy fulfillment angle of sexuality, a few booths are staffed by eager, sincere folk with a more ostensibly serious agenda. Naturally, the sexually and spiritually conflicted XXXChurch.com crew are on hand to ogle women while justifying their attendance with “Jesus Loves Porn Stars” abbreviated versions of the New Testament, but this year they are joined by the soft peddle missionary work of the Holy Hotties – and an equally eccentric religious group with a far more sobering cause: raising money to surgically restore the clitorises of mutilated African women.You’ll find the mostly female Clitoraid.org staff walking the show floor selling “Adopt a Clitoris” balloons or standing behind their booth wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the same slogan, handing out postcards filled with information about their laudable cause, and encouraging attendees to drop bills in a small donation box. Those who stick around for more details can watch an infomercial that plays throughout the day and, if they ask, see what petite staffer Panteha Naghi indicates is graphic and disturbing footage about the procedure that robs many African women of their capacity for pleasure and, as she explains it, “their femininity.”

In addition to her work with Clitoraid, Naghi is also involved with Raelsgirls.com, an industry friendly collective of Raelian religion members that promote “spirituality for the 21st century whereby sensuality, sexuality, pleasure, and fulfillment can be used as tools to aid SPIRITUAL GROWTH!” according to a pink flier available with the Clitoraid.org card.

Some may recall that in 2002 the group, which believes that space aliens created the human race and that evolution is a myth, shocked the world with the announcement that Raelian chemist Bridgette Boisselier had cloned a dozen babies, including one symbolically named “Eve.” Alas, when the scientific community and the press asked for proof – with Texas threatening to remove any cloned babies from their parents – the promised clones and their scientific explanations vaporized.

Perhaps less known is the group’s Stemaid.com campaign, which claims to make non-FDA approved stem cell therapy available to those seeking a cure to a wide variety of diseases, including autism, Parkinson’s, hepatitis, lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, and AIDS.

The latest scientific endeavor that Raelian founder and former race car driver/motor sports journalist turned UFO enthusiast Claude Vorilhon (aka “Rael”) has embraced is the building of a “Pleasure Hospital” in Burkina Faso (West Africa), staffed by doctors trained by a Raelian doctor who claims to have perfected a surgery by which he uses what Naghi and Clitoraid.org literature describes as “the root” of the clitoris in order to recreate a healthy and functional erectile body. The name of the doctor in question appears to depend upon the source, with both a French Dr. Foldes and a Dr. Lankoande cited.

Banned in America, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, the practice of what is commonly called female genital mutilation still takes place in much of the African continent. Although associated with some Muslim sects, a number of Christian sects also endorse variants, which range from removal of the clitoris to removal of the clitoris and surrounding labia or, in even more extreme cases, removal of the clitoris and labia, followed by the sewing shut of the vagina with only enough of an opening for menstruation and urination. It is believed, with reason, that the process – which can be done primitively with sharp pieces of metal by female village elders or surgically at the hands of doctors – discourages women from unsanctioned sexual behavior. Women who do not have the procedure performed on them are often viewed as unmarriageable and are socially ostracized.

Naghi, whose sincere opposition to what she describes as the “barbaric practice” is unquestionable, hopes that older women especially will seek out the restorative surgery once the Pleasure Hospital has been built. “We’re hoping that by having the reconstruction surgery where what’s been done to them can be undone and they can get their sensation back, then the older women will be less likely to continue the tradition, because it’s kind of useless if the woman can go ahead into adulthood and get it back.”

Skeptics point out that not every woman who has suffered excision retains a clitoral “root” with which to work, while others fear that further cutting of the genitals will trigger depression and flashback anxiety. Some propose that, like Clonaid, the laudable sounding goal is merely another way for Rael and his pleasure-loving followers to raise money and draw attention to their belief system.

Nonetheless, clitoris-appreciative porn fans and industry insiders alike are stuffing dollar bills and larger into the group’s donation box during AEE, hoping to fund the free surgeries – once the hospital exists, of course. According to Naghi, “What we’re doing is raising funds so that they can have the operation for free, and the equipment and the hospital constructed. We, I think, have purchased the land upon which the hospital will be built, but the building has to be constructed and the land cleared and all that.”

In other words, it’s possible there’s some land in West Africa where, if it’s been paid for, a hospital may be built where doctors, who may be trained in a local-anesthesia based procedure which may or may not exist, may be able to return some sensation to women brave enough to stay in their own country and face a life where their reconstructed bodies would make them social outcasts who will hopefully campaign against the various forms of female genital mutilation. Maybe.

Donors can receive receipts and view copies of what is claimed to be the organization’s non-profit status.