Porn Industry Threatens to Sue

Porn Industry Threatens to Sue Over L.A. County Law Requiring Condoms

Voters want actors in adult films to wear condoms, but the industry is threatening to sue and shift production elsewhere.
Nearly 56% of Los Angeles County voters approved the Safer Sex in the Adult Film Industry Act, which would require actors in pornographic films to wear condoms in order to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV, but enforcing the ballot measure remains a hurdle.
Under the initiative, sponsored by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, porn producers would have to obtain a public-health permit from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health in order to shoot adult films. A majority of the U.S. adult-film industry is in the San Fernando Valley in the county. Actors would be required to wear condoms during anal and vaginal sex scenes, and violators would be subject to civil fines, including potential criminal misdemeanor charges. The permit fee would pay for the enforcement, which ideally would involve nurses or others making routine inspections just as restaurants undergo routine health inspections, according to AIDS Healthcare Foundation spokesperson Ged Kenslea.




To justify the law, advocates for safer sex in the industry cite past HIV scares in 2004 and 2010 that temporarily halted adult-film production in L.A., as well as a syphilis outbreak in August 2012. A week before the election, a study of 168 adult-film actors conducted by public-health experts revealed that L.A. porn actors have a higher rate of STDs than Nevada prostitutes, who are required by state law to use condoms and get tested weekly for sexually transmitted diseases. Measure B has also received the endorsements of the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association.

Porn filmmakers claim that people will not pay to watch sex with condoms and insist they already have an effective system for protecting actors against STDs — regular testing for the diseases every 28 days. Industry medical consultants claimed to the New York Times that 350,000 sex scenes have been shot without condoms since 2004 without a single case of HIV transmission on set.


Posted by: Georgie


Credit: Olivia B. Waxman, Time.com