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from www.nydailynews.com – An HIV-positive adult film actor is hailing the Los Angeles City Council’s final approval of a city law requiring condoms on porn sets – but veteran star Ron Jeremy thinks its dirty politics.
Jeremy, originally from New York, told the Daily News he believes this week’s vote is part of a larger effort to stamp out porn production in the industry’s sunny San Fernando Valley home.
“Performers don’t mind wearing rubbers, but viewers don’t want to see it. It ruins the fantasy,” Jeremy said Wednesday.
“This will force production to leave Los Angeles, and that’s really what the supporters want,” he claimed.
The legendary lothario said local porn purveyors are already feeling the squeeze from a flood of overseas imports and low-budget, amateur productions – and new condom requirements will make competitive success even harder.
He said mandatory, monthly STD testing – now the industry standard – is more than adequate to keep performers safe.
He also claims he’s completely disease free after appearing in more than a thousand films
“What will they require next, dental dams and latex gloves? They call it a dental dam because damn if I’d wear one. How do you create an adult film plot, or any kind of fantasy, with stuff like that?” the 58-year-old scoffed.
HIV-positive former porn star Derrick Burts, 25, offered a starkly different perspective.
Burts told The News he tested negative for HIV on Sept. 3, 2010, but then quickly contracted the disease filming a gay porn flick in Florida
The heterosexual crossover actor from Riverside County said it’s “pure luck” he didn’t infect any female actresses before he took his follow-up test – which came back positive for HIV – a month later.
“Luckily I didn’t work with any female performers during those weeks. If I had gone to work without a condom, I would have spread it. The industry got very lucky there,” Burts told The News.
“Testing is a false security blanket. It doesn’t protect you. It only notifies you when you have something,” he said. “Before I started in the adult industry, I never had an STD in my life. Then in a period of four months, I contracted gonorrhea, chlamydia and HIV. You can’t tell me the system worked.”
He said throat gonorrhea that he contracted from a female performer in southern California weakened his immune system and caused him to contract HIV during oral sex with a male co-star in Florida.
The newly approved Los Angeles ordinance, which passed with a 9-1 vote Tuesday, still requires a signature by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
If the mayor signs it, porn productions granted permits will be subjected to random spot checks, officials said.
“History has shown that regulating sexual behavior between consenting adults doesn’t work. Testing procedures are already in place and have worked well for years,” Steven Hirsch, co-founder of Los Angeles-based Vivid Entertainment, said in a statement.
He said his company, one of the largest porn producers, is “condom optional” and lets its performers decide if they want to use condoms or not.
“We don’t believe that trying to police thousands of movie sets a year is the best use of taxpayer money,” he said. “Public funds should be spent on things that matter.”