No Glove, No Movie?

Last week, in a near-unanimous 9–1 vote, Los Angeles City Council members voted in a new city ordinance which requires adult film actors to wear condoms while performing in films.

This news came as a victory to Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which has been the driving force in bringing this issue forward. The foundation has been aggressively seeking changes in an effort to protect the occupational health and safety of workers in the adult film industry. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation collected over 60,000 signatures of support from local residents, which allowed the law to be approved by council without being put to a special city vote. The new law requires mandatory condom use by performers in order to be granted a filming permit in Los Angeles. Porn producers who do not comply with the regulations will be required to pay a fee and the rule will be enforced by surprise inspections of filming sites.

The ruling is expected to have a significant impact on the multi-billion dollar porn industry concentrated in this area: It is estimated that 90% of all legally distributed pornographic films made in the United States are either filmed or produced by studios based in the San Fernando Valley. The San Fernando Valley has often been referred to as “Porn Valley” and nearly 2/3 of the area is under the jurisdiction of the City of Los Angeles.

In a response to the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and the deaths of prominent adult film actors such as John Holmes, the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation created a system for regular testing among performers. Adult film industry actors are currently tested for HIV, Chlamydia, and Gonorrhea every 30 days, and Hepatitis, Syphilis, and the Herpes Simplex Virus annually. Many critics argue that this approach to testing is not sufficient as it does not offer any real protection against infection, only the ability to learn of a diagnosis quickly.
The American adult film industry has been hit with a number of small outbreaks of HIV among adult film actors since the inception of the regular testing policies. The majority of these outbreaks began with a single male actor and resulted in several of their female partners also testing positive. While HIV transmission has been relatively low among adult film performers, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are on the rise. Untreated STIs can lead to a substantially increased risk of contracting HIV during unprotected sexual contact with an HIV+ partner.

Statistics from the Los Angeles Country Department of Public Health illustrated a sharp increase in the number of sexually transmitted infections experienced by adult film actors during the years 2000-2008. In the period of April 2004 – March 2008, there were a reported 2,847 STIs among 1,884 adult film performers in Los Angeles County. Women represented 70% of these cases, with 15% having experienced 4 or more infections within a 12 month period. The overrepresentation of women is largely thought to be the result of the high female-to-male ratio of performers in the industry, and the physical susceptibility of women for contracting various kinds of infections through riskier and prolonged sexual activities.

Critics and representatives of the Adult Film Industry feel that mandatory condom use will have a significant impact on the profitability of their films. They report that viewers of adult entertainment will find condoms to be a disruption of the fantasies that these films aim to create. In an interview last Wednesday with the New York Daily News, veteran adult film actor Ron Jeremy stated: "Performers don't mind wearing rubbers, but viewers don't want to see it. It ruins the fantasy". Others challenge the new requirements by stating that condom use in the industry should be the choice of consenting adults and not an issue for the government.
Where should we draw the line between an employer’s duty to ensure occupational health and safety and the government’s involvement in consenting sexual activities? Does condom use diminish the fantasy of adult films, or is their use a powerful reinforcement of safer-sex social norms? The answers to these questions remain to be seen as industry executives are faced with the decision to comply with the new rules or set up operations in another jurisdiction.


http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2012/01/21/HIV_Advocate_Pushes_Mandated_Condom_Use_in_Porn/
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/ron-jeremy-exclusive-condom-law-a-wrap-porn-industry-a-article-1.1008562?localLinksEnabled=false
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/01/condoms-porn-aids-la-county.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/18/local/la-me-0118-porn-condoms-20120118
https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/262811/col-porn-ladph-study.pdf

This blog was originally posted on AIDS Calgary’s The A Word on February 2, 2012. Check out the A Word at http://aidscalgary.blogspot.com/