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Diane Duke, Executive Director of the Free Speech Coalition, was a guest of the DirtyOldMen.tv iPod show this week.

The interview covered an enormous amount of ground, but I’ve elected to focus for the moment on what was discussed concerning the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

Duke mentions that AHF has a whopping $200M a year budget. Host Colin Rowntree mentioned “nefarious profit motives” so it seemed like a natural springboard to get on to the subject of Michael Weinstein.

“Weinsten and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation has targeted the adult industry as far as trying to mandate condoms,” said Duke.

“We’ve had in place for years great protocols and practices around testing. Our performers test after 28 days for Chlamydia, gonorrhea and HIV with the most state of the art tests out there. That has a window of 9 to 11 days, and we haven’t had a case of HIV transmitted within the industry since 2004. Think about that.”

“We’ve had two performers test positive since 2004 but from all indications both people contracted that from outside the industry,” Duke continued.

“In LA County alone since 2008 there have been 6500 new cases of HIV and again none of those have happened on set.”

According to Duke, Michael Weinstein has gone through the legislature trying to mandate condoms.

“That didn’t work. He went to the County and sued the County saying it’s your duty for public health reasons to mandate condoms and make sure that the adult entertainment industry is using condoms. The County said, no, that’s not within our purview, we believe that’s unconstitutional and they won the lawsuit.

“They also said this is not a public health issue; this is not a problem. That’s what they said in the lawsuit. AHF appealed, they won the appeal. AHF went after and hammered and hammered and hammered AIM. They were protesting AIM. They called Cal-OSHA on them, had all kinds of inspections. Cal-OSHA shows up at AIM demanding patient records.
Patient privacy records? No, no, no.”

Duke, who worked for Planned Parenthood, said she knows about patient records and the Government doesn’t have a right to them.

“For them to show up and say we want your patient records was absolutely absurd.”

AHF then basically forced AIM into mountainous legal bills and when Derrick Burts [Patient Zeta] was discovered to have HIV, is when AHF went into a full court press.

“Cal OSHA showed up at peoples’ doors demanding their 2257 records which is illegal,” Duke went on to say.

“They said the Federal Government had given them permission to do so which was a lie. So we had a lot of attorneys going, no, we’re not going to give you those records and you don’t have a right to them.”

According to Duke, the ACLU took up the case for AIM around patient privacy.

“They won and just two months ago they won all their legal fees paid by Cal OSHA. That was a great win.”

Duke points out that with California being $16B in debt, Cal OSHA has been stripped as thin as possible.

“Yet they keep on pushing this.”

Duke said AHF makes it an ongoling practice of calling Cal OSHA complaining about the adult business.

“They [AHF] weren’t successful with the legislature; they weren’t able to win the case at the County; they brought it to the City and asked the City to pass an ordinance mandating it. The City Council said no, so they started collecting signatures. Let me clarify. They paid signature gatherers.”

Duke mentions that in the Wal-Mart next to her house, she talked to some of the gatherers to see what they’d tell her.

“The woman comes up to me and says, ‘do you want to prevent college students from getting HIV?’ I have them lying about this. The information that was going out about this ordinance was wrong.”

Having talked to campaign workers to get an idea of costs, Duke figures that AHF spent $350,000 to get the issue on the city ordinance.

“And that’s a conservative estimate- it could have easily cost twice that much.

“They got it on the City ordinance and the City’s attorney sued AHF because he knew it was unconstitutional and it wasn’t in their jurisdiction. He wanted to take it off the ballot because it would have entailed a special election and cost the city $4.4M to do this election.

“So, instead of doing that, the City Council [many of whom receive donations from Weinstein] were upset with the attorney and in a backroom deal they passed it [in January 2012] and didn’t put it on the ballot.

“This is a City ordinance that ties permits with mandating condoms,” Duke continued.

“Film LA which grants all the permits says that about 40 permits a month contain nudity. That includes Hollywood permits, so very few of those are adult.

“So it doesn’t impact us that much, but the problem with this bill and the problem with the ordinance and the fact that it passed is the Government is intruding into how we create film. It’s government compelling us to create a product for which there is little to no demand. Because the truth is people don’t want to watch films with condoms on them.”

Duke is asked to venture a guess about Weinstein’s motivations.

“I’ve been interviewed by people all over the world about this issue and that’s the one consistent question people ask and I’ve come to the conclusion that AHF is in the HIV business. They’re completely focused on making money off of people with HIV. They have about a $200M budget a year.

“Many of those dollars are government contracts. We’re talking about millions of dollar they’re [AHF] putting in towards the condom issue.”

It doesn’t take a genius to figure that if Weinstein can stir up an HIV panic the more money he stands to get from the Feds.