Condoms Enforced in Porn Industry by LA City Council
Actors in the adult film industry will be required to use protection during filming, according to a new law passed on Tuesday in the Los Angeles City Council.
The L.A. City Council passed the measure with a vote of 9-1 and the measure will now be headed to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for approval.
The measure passed despite a threat from industry producers that they would relocate over the requirement. Producers argue that consumers prefer videos that do not include protection.
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“The only thing that the city could potentially achieve is losing some film permit money and driving some productions away, but you can’t actually compel an industry to create a product that the market doesn’t want,” Christian Mann, general manager of one of the industry’s largest film companies told the Associated Press.
The industry already has a self imposed testing mandate in which most major companies requires that actors be tested for sexually transmitted diseases at least every 30 days. Industry leaders claim that no cases of HIV have been directly linked to the industry since 2004, but warn that the new measure would require business relocation that could potentially cause the standards of testing to fall by the wayside.
However, others find the move to be a progressive health measure that seeks to limit the spread of deadly and debilitating sexually transmitted diseases in the highly contested multi-billion dollar industry.
“We are not opposed to testing, but testing is not prevention in the same way that a barrier protection is,” AIDS Healthcare Foundation Spokesman Ged Kenslea told the AP.
Several former porn stars have spoken out about the industry, including Shelley Lubben, founder of The Pink Cross Foundation, an organization that reaches out to those in the industry to offer emotional, financial and transitional support.
“The California pornography industry is a destructive, drug infested, abusive and sexually diseased industry which causes severe negative secondary effects on female and male adult industry workers as well as the general public,” Lubben wrote on ConcenantEyes.com in a 2008 post.
“The current practice of periodic HIV and STD testing may detect some disease early, but often fails to prevent transmission,” she said. “In the statements I have received from females and males working in the pornographic industry and those who previously worked in the industry, at least 80 percent admit to catching an STD while working in the California pornography industry.”
The measure was introduced last month when the AHF garnered 70,000 signatures on a petition calling for the city council to consider the measure.
