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Nude Church Has La Mesa in an Uproar

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Times Staff Writer

It seemed perfectly innocuous when Thad Poppell walked into City Hall in May and applied for a business license to run a “church-operated health spa.”

But Poppell has discovered that a nude spa where people meet to have sex does not sit well with a conservative city that its mayor proudly says has “very high moral ideals.”

When police paid a visit to the Between the Two spa on La Mesa Boulevard in June, church activity was not what they found. Instead, Poppell--a self-styled pastor in the Universal Life Church and crusader for sexual freedom--told police that “all types of sexual activity were allowed and encouraged” inside the spa’s magenta-colored rooms, Assistant City Atty. James Shannon said.

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Based on the police report of the visit, Shannon said, the city pulled in the welcome mat, refunding Poppell’s $53 fee in June and denying him a business license. Under an unusual clause in La Mesa’s municipal code, any commercial activity operating “contrary to the public peace and morals” is illegal, Shannon said.

City officials, he said, also were influenced in their decision by an ad for the spa in the sex magazine Swing, accompanied by a picture of six nude women and a man. In the ad, the spa is billed as “San Diego’s only private coed health spa . . . 5,000 square feet of pure pleasure.”

The city has refused to grant Poppell a hearing on the license denial.

“We feel the citizenry is behind us,” said Mayor Fred Nagel. “La Mesa is a community of citizens with very high moral ideals. In the opinion of the majority of the community, (the nude spa) is an undesirable business.”

But Poppell, whose one-man crusade for open sex has taken him to court--and to jail--several times in the last five years, does not give up easily. When county authorities forced him to close a sex house in Solana Beach, Poppell opened a nude spa on Wabash Avenue in San Diego. After police raided that spa, Poppell opened another. Thad’s Gallery is still open today on 5th Avenue in San Diego.

On June 21, Poppell filed a lawsuit in San Diego Superior Court asking the court to order the city to grant him a business license for his La Mesa spa or a fair hearing at City Hall. A ruling is expected today, Shannon said.

Poppell’s attorney, Thomas Homann, argues that a business license is solely a device to raise revenue, and that the city cannot use it to exclude people from doing business in La Mesa. Under the municipal code, the city may regulate businesses such as massage parlors and video arcades, but there is nothing in the code relating to health clubs, Homann said.

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Once someone pays the business license tax, the “city is required to issue the certificate of a business license,” Homann said.

Moreover, he said, Poppell has the right to challenge the city’s decision at a hearing in City Hall.

The city claims “absolute, complete control to determine who does business in La Mesa,” Homann said. “That’s an absurd proposition . . . The City of La Mesa is not a totalitarian state, as far as I know.”

The city contends that Poppell has no right to a hearing because he was never granted the right to operate.

Pending a court ruling, the spa is open daily for business--to the chagrin of many residents of La Mesa, a city where Shannon said people “still have values.”

The spa “goes against everything we believe,” said Michael Tolbert, associate pastor of the First Assembly of God, a church across the street from the Between the Two. “We’re not pleased about it at all.”

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“It would be degrading to the general community” to allow the spa to operate, agreed church secretary Loweta Chewning.

“La Mesa has a small-town flavor,” said Jim Phillips, administrative assistant for the Chamber of Commerce. “I think people like it that way. It’s quiet . . . and when things like this happen, it tends to shake everybody up.”

Angry La Mesa residents last year battled a Mount Helix couple who were hosting sex parties at their home, eventually forcing the couple to move out of the city.

But Poppell sees nothing wrong with the “swinging” life style he promotes.

“Good Christians should tend to their business and not try to be witch hunters,” he said. In an interview in the “couples-only privacy section” of the spa--a carpeted lounge adjoining small bedrooms and two “group areas” with two double beds each--Poppell said that “morality should not be based on nudity and sex . . . I’m convinced we are not doing anything wrong. We’re very moral people.”

Quoting liberally from Scripture, the balding, 52-year-old Oceanside resident defended his spa as “a congregation of the Universal Life Church.” (Last year, the Internal Revenue Service revoked the tax-exempt status of the church, which is the largest mail-order church in the United States. For a small fee, the church mails minister’s credentials on request.)

Since 1974, when he arrived in San Diego County from Florida, Poppell said, he has been “fighting for sexual freedom,” setting up residential and commercial locations where consenting adults can meet for sex.

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In 1981, a Vista Municipal Court jury convicted Poppell of seven misdemeanor counts of running a house of prostitution--Poppell called it a “party house”--in Solana Beach. An appeals court later consolidated the seven counts into one, with a six-month jail sentence.

Undeterred, Poppell renewed his business when he got out of jail, this time choosing commercial rather than residential locations.

In 1983, San Diego police raided the Wabash Club, a nude spa Poppell operated in San Diego, and arrested him on charges of pimping, pandering and perjury. The charges were dropped because the district attorney’s office was not able to prove that the female clients at the club were prostitutes.

Poppell eventually pleaded guilty to one count of felony forgery for carrying a false driver’s license, and was placed on probation.

Today, Poppell said, the Gallery and the La Mesa spa are the only businesses of their kind in San Diego County that operate from commercial locations.

“I’ve won a place for people who like this life style,” he said.

San Diego County Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Anear, who prosecuted Poppell in the Solana Beach and Wabash Avenue cases, conceded that by “intentionally running his business along the edge of the law,” Poppell has managed to remain in operation.

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“We haven’t seemed to be able to change Mr. Poppell’s way of thinking,” Anear said. Businesses like Poppell’s present a problem for law enforcement agencies, he said, because it is difficult to prove that prostitution is taking place there.

Meanwhile, Between the Two attracts large crowds on weekend nights, Poppell said. Customers learn about the spa primarily by word of mouth, he said.

First-time customers at the spa must call to arrange an interview, Poppell said. They sign a pledge to donate a $35 membership fee and donate $10 per day visit and $25 per night visit.

“We believe in the respectability of nudism and all physical relationships and the right to gather in private and worship toward these goals,” the pledge reads in part.

Once inside, customers disrobe and may use the sauna, whirlpool, weight room or “couples-only” section, which features large mirrors and a ceiling strobe light. Alcoholic beverages are not served on the premises, but may be brought in by customers.

It is true that sexual activity is welcomed at the spa, said Thomas Homann, Poppell’s attorney. But, he said, “What’s going on in there is entirely legal. It’s not illegal for people to get together, including enjoying each other’s company sexually.”

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Poppell said he believes that his philosophy will take hold.

“I intend to stay open,” he said. “If I backed down in the middle, I’d just be giving up the whole American spirit of it. Within time, the whole U.S. is going to see that a person’s sexual freedom is their own business.”

But the citizens of La Mesa are out to prove Poppell wrong. Mayor Nagel said: “Businesses like (Poppell’s) ruin the moral fiber of the country.”

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