from www.laweekly.com – Condoms, porn and safe sex come to the heart of Orange County Thursday as the state’s Department Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) holds a Standards Board meeting that will hear arguments for mandating condoms on the sets of adult film shoots in California.

Former porn stars Shelley Lubben, Jan (Meza) Merritt, and Madelyne Hernandez, as well as current porn producer Dave Pounder, are scheduled to testify. The board will weigh in a proposal to create an advisory board that would help decide whether or not pushing condoms on the industry is a good idea.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) has been lobbying the state to broaden its workplace safety rules to include adult film shoots and the “blood-born pathogens” — regulated by California in other employment settings — that sometimes cross paths there.

In other words, AHF wants the state (and the county of L.A., for that matter) to require condoms in porn so that actors don’t contract HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. While the county has been resistant to the idea, the state here is leaving the door ajar to the possibility.

Porn industry insiders, however, argue that such a requirement would simply push the industry further underground — and into other states and countries. Porn’s own voluntary system of asking working actors to be tested regularly and have on-set current test results has flaws but mostly works.