There is an interesting dispute in San Francisco after state safety officials fined a pornography company $78,000 for maintaining a dangerous workplace. The citation includes allowing performers to have sex on camera without using condoms. That led to objections that the officials were singling out this controversial but legal industry and they may have a point. Wearing condoms is not legally required, even though it is clearly a best practice for “performers” and non-performers alike. However, the actual complaint against Cybernet Entertainment, the parent company of Internet porn producer Kink.com, was not brought by conservative or religious groups but the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a Los Angeles-headquartered advocacy group.
The AHF Foundation successfully lobbied for condom requirements on porn sets in the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County. The group filed complaints after two Kink.com performers involved in a romantic relationship were found to be HIV-positive. However, Kink.com insists that this is a moral issue not a health issue because it found that the two have contracted AIDS in their private relations. The adult film industry notes that it has adopted testing of all active performers biweekly for a range of sexually transmitted diseases, including syphilis, hepatitis and HIV.
Here is what I find interesting: if the company guarantees biweekly testing, shouldn’t the regulators have to show that condoms are still necessary? If there is little danger with testing, why should the industry be required to impose the wearing of condoms. Once again, I like the practice of requiring the wearing of condoms in these films because it encourages safe sex. However, these films are a form of expression and, at least viewed by their makers, a claimed art form. That raises first amendment concerns.
The site itself speaks of its curious mission and history:
The company was started in 1997 by bondage enthusiast Peter Acworth. After launching his first website – Hogtied.com – and running it from his graduate school dorm room for a full year, Peter moved the company to San Francisco, where it has continued to grow into the worlds most recognized and respected company promoting the acceptance of human sexuality.
Many find this work offensive and immoral. However, he does not and views the films as that expression with not just sexual but political meaning.
If the company can show that it tests biweekly, should the burden be on the government to show a need for this requirement?
I do not understand the hysteria about requiring condoms to protect the sex workers. That is what porn actors/actresses are – sex workers. I come from the view of protecting the workers. I do not approach this from a corporate profit motive (no market for condom pornography). Do you think any porn producer or director will allow the male sex worker to choose to use a condom or the female actress to demand a condom during the act? The same way every safety regulation has had to be made mandatory by law to force the owner/producer to make the workplace safer in every other workplace context, porn is no different – there must be such a law to force the porn producers to provide a safer workplace. To say “art” gives porn producers an exception, then why do we have special child labor laws for the Hollywood film industry, for example. There has been one porn star after another in the last six months that have been diagnosed as HIV positive. These sex workers believe that condoms are necessary. Read the following articles or just google “porn stars HIV 2013” to find the unsafe working conditions that sex workers are forced to endure. I only chose three articles, but there are dozens available to read.
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/hiv-positive-porn-stars-argue-condoms-article-1.1460438
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/porn-hiv-penis-bleeding_n_3944401.html
http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2013/09/fifth-porn-star-tests-hiv-positive-names-revealed/
Union Man
Despite the misinformation conveyed in the articles to which you link, there have in fact been just three porn stars who have become HIV-positive in the past year (in the past TEN years, in fact), and all of them contracted the disease OFF the set, in their private lives. The fact that they did not manage to spread the disease within the performer community is due in large part to the (hetero) porn industry’s insistence on STD testing every two weeks, and performers are not allowed to have on-camera sex without a clean test. The fact that HIV-positive performers (and off-screen couple) Cameron Bay and Rod Daily advocate the use of condoms is in large part because of the funds being provided for their care by AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which funded and managed to pass a mandatory condom law in late 2012. In other words, they’re being PAID to advocate for condom use, even though such condom use would not have prevented their own infections. The fact is, most performers either don’t want to use condoms for various reasons (difficulty in maintaining erections, and irritation of the vaginal wall) or would like the choice whether to use them or not—a choice much of the industry supports. Beyond that, the erotic message delivered by hardcore adult films would be affected by the appearance of condoms in some scenes, which makes it a First Amendment issue.
Why is there new porn? What has not yet been done?
As far as CalOSHA is concerned, mandatory condom/goggles/face shield/something like a hazmat suit is ALREADY the law under Title 8 Sec. 5193, so Measure B was kind of superfluous—but in any case, now the state Assembly is considering a bill largely similar to Measure B, which is AB 1576. It’s equally constitutionally flawed.
I’m glad Mark K returned here to explain the industy’s perspective and position. My main concern was the latency period, but it seems to be addressed more cautiously than I thought it was.
On a slightly related issue, I believe industrial / worker safety regulations should be at the most granular a statewide policy. A patchwork of differing rules makes things hard to manage on businesses that have multiple locations and have to factor each site differently.
Rafflaw: In the adult industry, who has sex with whom on camera is, in a sense, a matter of public record, since it shows up on DVDs and websites all over the world. Moreover, adult performers, who are tested for HIV and other STDs on a biweekly basis, keep diaries listing what movies they have appeared in and who they had sex with in those movies; that’s why it is fairly easy to tell if an infection happened on an adult video set. And when an actor turns up HIV positive, all other performers that that person had sex with within the “window period” of the disease are likewise tested (using the most sophisticated PCR-RNA test available—we can’t use antibody tests because they don’t show infections soon enough), as are the actor’s off-screen partners, and when it turns out, as it has in all cases since 2004, that ALL of the actors with whom the now-HIV-positive performer has worked are all HIV-negative, then we know that the transmission didn’t occur on the set.
joe t,
Thanks for your input, but I have a hard time believing that they can tell who it came from, let alone whether that infection was created on or off duty which is the important issue for me. However, I don’t even play a doctor on TV, so we need someone with more expertise than both of us to confirm. 🙂
Does size matter?
I am a journalist for the adult movie industry trade publication Adult Video News (AVN.) For those who aren’t aware, the California Health Code (Title 8) Sec. 5193, sets forth the precautions that hospital personnel and other medical workers must use to prevent their skin from coming in contact with blood or OPIM—”other potentially infectious material.” The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (CalOSHA) has decided that those regulations, written for hospital workers, should also apply to the adult industry, but a careful reading of Sec. 5193 shows that it mandates not only condoms, but in fact a plethora of “protective gear” including goggles, face shields, and a requirement that there by no “skin to skin contact” between people involved in various activities including sexual intercourse. AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) has already spent millions of dollars promoting laws and filing lawsuits and otherwise plaguing the adult movie industry, supposedly to bring it in line with Sec. 5193’s dictates, although they only ever talk about condoms, as if the other “protective barrier” requirements didn’t exist, and disregard the question of whether the adult movie industry, whose free speech rights have been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, is even properly covered by Sec. 5193. AHF is about to be kicked out of its “intervenor” status in a lawsuit in which they’re attempting to save Measure B, a LA County ordinance passed at AHF’s behest—they gathered thousands of signatures to put it on the ballot—in November of 2012 that requires all adult productions in the county to use condoms and the other barrier-protective devices called for in Sec. 5193. The reason for their impending dismissal from the suit is Hollingsworth v. Perry, which held that a party must have a personal stake in a matter before being allowed to be a party to a lawsuit for or against it. The Ninth Circuit will hear the challenge to AHF’s status on March 3. It is also important to point out that due to the industry’s extensive STD testing program, there has not been a single HIV transmission on a hetero adult movie set since 2004.
@rafflaw
To answer your question, I’m pretty sure it’s possible to determine where you caught the disease by examining the virus itself and comparing it to the possible host from which you caught it. Viruses are not static, they are constantly changing. If anyone else has more info, please weigh in because this definitely isn’t my area of expertise.
Safety first.
There is risk in every occupation. If the risk and the possible results of a choice (to condom, or not to condom) are made known to participants, let the participants choose.
In Honor of Pete Seeger I will enter some lyrics for the appropriate protest song for the Occupy Movement to sing at the rally over this rubber thing.
[music]
If I had a rubber…
I’d use it in the mo oo rn ing!
I’d use it in the eve ee n ing,
All over this land!
I’d scream about Justice!
I’d rally for Freee dom.
I’d rally about the love between … the actors and their sisters..
All over this laaaaand.
While I have “no dog in this hunt,” I find it troubling that a government is punishing a business based on a complaint filed by an advocacy group of any description. If I am running a welding shop and some clean air group goes to the government with a complaint, would it be reasonable that I get fined even though I am not violating any existing air quality standards merely because I am not adhering to the standards that the advocacy group would like to be upheld?
It seems that the government is enforcing not the standards of the community, but rather the standards of some self-elected group. My hypothetical welding shop follows laws published by the feds and the state in which I operate, not those set by the “Blue Sky Lovers of Petaluma County.”
The porkers ought to file a motion to intervene.
As a dog who is known for his humping proclivities, who has never worn a condom except when doing a film for Walt Disney a while back, who is a firm believer in the First Amendment for First activities, I side with the capitalists here. The dogs in the dogpac chimed in with a joint statement which says: Keep it simple sailor. DogbiscuitGuy says he will kick me off the Dogalogue Machine if I don’t stick to serious subjects. So, I will retreat to wear the rubber meets the road so to speak.
Oh, and I would object to the “standing to sue” of this plaintiff or consciencious objector. They might be Scientologists.
How do you prove where you caught AIDS? If you obtained it by having unsafe sex, how do you prove that it was unsafe sex that was not during “work” hours?
This is politics interfering w/ health. It was PC politics that prevented the Aids epidemic from being treated like it should have been and this is the overreaction. If actors are tested then that should be the end of it.
Can there be any doubt that the AHF is a front for religious/conservative anti-porn groups?
On the internet this is called ‘concern trolling’? I’m not your enemy, I’m just so _concerned_ about you.
There is no market for porn featuring condoms. Yes, there is risk in performing sex acts, but with ubiquitous testing, the risk is far lower for porn stars than for ordinary people who are sexually active.
Here comes the people vs flynt…..again and again…. If the use is voluntary then why the stir…. But then again…. It’s not for me…. So I don’t have a dog in this sled…..
OMG!! Or WTH???