LOS ANGELES–After the Los Angeles Times reported today that an actress in the adult entertainment industry recently tested HIV-positive, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) renewed its call for California legislation that would require the use of condoms by actors performing in porn videos produced by California’s multi-billion dollar adult entertainment industry—a mainstay of the San Fernando Valley economy. AHF had previously tried to sponsor similar legislation but had difficulty finding a legislator willing to author and carry the potentially controversial legislation.
“This most recent HIV infection found in an actress working in California’s booming porn business has prompted AHF to renew our call for state legislation requiring the use of condoms in all adult entertainment productions,” said Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the US’ largest non-profit HIV/AIDS healthcare provider, which operates the largest community-based alternative HIV testing program in California conducting more than 14,000 free HIV tests annually.
“Working is the operative word here. Why shouldn’t people working in California’s multi-billion dollar adult entertainment industry enjoy the same protections as a construction worker protected by a hard hat and other safety gear? Legislators need to put aside their squeamishness and draft a bill as a worker safety provision of California’s Labor Code akin to how the Labor Code currently requires the use of hard hats and other garments and barriers as safety precautions on certain California work sites and locations.”
The push for ‘Condoms in Porn’ Background:
In early April 2004 the Southern California adult film industry was sent into a tailspin after the announcement that a Los Angeles based male performer tested positive for HIV. Although the performer contracted HIV while out of the country, he returned to film in Los Angeles and worked without condoms, ensuing in the infection of four other performers. Those infections had been at the forefront of much controversy over whether or not condoms should be legally mandated in the pornographic film industry.
Unlike the gay porn industry, condom use is not currently standard procedure in the straight porn film industry. In 2004, during the previous HIV outbreak in the industry, only two of the approximately 200 adult film production companies in Southern California required their performers to use condoms, and about 17% of adult film actors regularly use condoms, according to industry executives (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 4/22/04).
According to a 2004 op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, Larry Flynt, the publisher and figurehead of Flynt Publications (Hustler films), argued that “market testing—and conventional wisdom—tells us that films that feature actors wearing condoms don’t sell.” AHF argued at the time that that simply did not have to be true, noting that Flynt has been an influential leader in the pornography industry over past decades, and is in a position to change the way that heterosexual pornographic films view condom usage.
AHF will now work to identify a legislator in Sacramento willing to author and carry a ‘condoms in porn’ bill in this legislative session