Use condoms or be made to use them,
porn industry told
A California assembly member has said he will campaign for state legislation requiring porn performers to use condoms unless the industry voluntarily adopts them as standard. Democrat Paul Koretz, who represents the city of West Hollywood, has written to 185 porn producers saying that condoms represent the kind of elementary health and safety precaution that workers in other fields are entitled to by law.
Koretz' letter followed findings that only 17 percent of performers in heterosexual porn films are using condoms. This is exactly the same proportion as before the "HIV scare" this April, when five performers, four of whom had had sex with each other on set, acquired HIV. For a brief period, the number using condoms jumped by 5 percent, but it has now reverted to normal. During the scare, Republican assembly member Tim Leslie introduced Bill 2798, which would have compelled all performers to use condoms, but this was dropped in May when Koretz, who is chair of California's Labor and Employment Committee, said it had been put together "too hastily."
But now Koretz is warning that he will introduce legislation too, unless practices change. "I fully expect the adult entertainment industry to require the use of condoms," he wrote to the producers. "Failure to do so ... invites the legislature to exercise its authority to mandate more stringent actions"Koretz' letter and accompanying guidelines were drawn up by Thomas J. Coates, a professor of infectious diseases at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine. He said: "Health care workers exposed to body fluids are required to wear gloves. Workers in the adult industry deserve protection, just like any other workers"However, adult-film producers poured scorn on Koretz' proposals. Porn mogul Larry Flynt said: "I appreciate what the assemblyman is doing. But I want to know who is going to put the condoms on the actors. Is he going to come down here and do it himself?"
Other producers said they would carry on making films without condoms. Lexington Steele, president of Mercenary Pictures, said: "I don't think it's the place of the authorities to decide whether actors are to use condoms or not." He said that requiring condom use might hit profits and encourage the development of underground "bareback" studios. Gay-porn filmmakers are similarly concerned that legislation compelling condom use will undermine the voluntary code adopted by mainstream gay companies, which require condoms and will not hire actors who have appeared in bareback movies. Titan Media president Bruce Lahey told Gay.com in May that, although 30-50 percent of gay porn actors have HIV, there had never been a transmission case on one of his sets-- though he could not say the same of the bareback studios. It is estimated that around 1,200 performers work as porn stars in the San Fernando area of Los Angeles, the epicenter of the U.S. porn industry.
by Gus Cairns
