Follow AdultFYI at twitter@adultfyi1; Follow Gene Ross at twitter@GeneRoss3

I don’t think Diane Duke’s in a position any more to taunt municipalities.

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. – from www.therepublic.com – Intending to dissuade the adult video industry from setting up shop here, some city officials here want a law making porn actors wear condoms. But how, they wonder, will such a law be enforced?

“Generally speaking, our City Council believes that if you’re going to have an ordinance, you need to be able to enforce it,” City Manager Mike Sedell said. “It would not make sense for the council to have an ordinance unless you were going to enforce it. So if the council chooses to adopt it, we will do enforcement.”

The ordinance, which would require porn actors to wear condoms when making adult videos in Simi Valley, is expected to be on the council’s Feb. 27 agenda.

The measure’s stated aim is to protect porn performers from contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. But Simi Valley Mayor Bob Huber has said its underlying purpose is to send a message to the adult video industry in the neighboring San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles that it’s not welcome in “family-centered” Simi Valley.

Diane Duke, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, the adult industry’s primary trade association, called the proposed ordinance “laughable.”

“I believe it is clear political posturing by elected officials who know nothing about our industry and believe that they can create an atmosphere of fear coupled with a false sense of security that the City Council is protecting the people of Simi Valley,” she said. “They may as well ban dragons and Bigfoot while they are at it.”

If the council adopts the ordinance, city administrators will make an enforcement plan, Sedell said.

City code or police officers might be responsible for enforcing it, perhaps on a spot-check basis, he said.

“It remains to be seen. Once we look at the costs and a scenario of how the enforcement would take place, we would then determine the best department it would come from,” Sedell said.

Sedell added that no police officers would be taken off the street to enforce it.

“I believe it is clear political posturing by elected officials who know nothing about our industry and believe that they can create an atmosphere of fear coupled with a false sense of security that the City Council is protecting the people of Simi Valley,” she said. “They may as well ban dragons and Bigfoot while they are at it.”

“Would it be through a detective unit?” he said. “Could it be through a crime prevention area? All of those are hypotheticals. I’m not suggesting (at this time) that it’s going any given place. It’s something that we would evaluate basically on a cost-benefit analysis.”

The ordinance would require adult video producers, as a condition of receiving a filming permit from the city, to have porn actors use condoms. The ordinance would let the city charge the producers a fee to cover the costs of periodic inspections of their sets.

Violations would result in permit revocation. Violators would be guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $1,000 fine and six months in Ventura County jail, City Attorney Tracy Noonan said.

Simi Valley’s ordinance was drafted at the urging of the mayor after the Los Angeles City Council approved its own ordinance Jan. 17, prompting speculation that porn studios might start shooting in nearby Simi Valley and other area cities where they could make videos without condoms. The studios say their viewers are turned off by condoms.

Enforcing the Simi Valley ordinance might be a moot issue considering that of 59 filming permits the city issued in 2011, apparently only one was for an adult video, according to Environmental Services Director Peter Lyons.

And once the council approves the ordinance, there would be no motivation for porn companies to want to shoot there — at least for those who planned to get a filming permit. Many adult shoots are done “underground” without a permit, according to public officials and people in the industry.

“I doubt there is any shooting in Simi Valley,” Duke said. “But even so, I wonder if the folks of Simi Valley want their tax dollars utilized to create an enforcement mechanism — preparing police or some other entity to storm onto adult sets to be the condom police.”

Councilman Mike Judge argued at the council’s Jan. 30 meeting that the ordinance likely would most often get enforced in connection with porn shoots done without a permit.

“Most of the time we’re going to come across this (ordinance) as far as enforcement, when the police get a call that: ‘There’s 15 trucks on my street. I think there’s a movie next door,’ ” said Judge, a Los Angeles police officer. “So we can get them for not having a filming permit, and we can get them now for not using condoms if this ordinance passes.”

Simi Valley police said last week, however, that they can recall no instances of coming across porn videos being shot in town without a permit.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the driving force behind Los Angeles’ condom ordinance, welcomes the Simi Valley ordinance.

“We wholeheartedly support it,” said Brian Chase, the foundation’s assistant general counsel. “We think it’s very important that this industry learn that it can’t keep getting away with its unsafe practices, even if it tries to move.”

The porn industry says it already has enough safeguards to protect porn actors from contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, including regular blood testing. There have been no HIV transmissions in the industry since 2004, Duke says.