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Loading ...Porn makers challenged for not mandating condoms
08.23.2009 5:21pm EDT
(Los Angeles) An AIDS advocacy group filed complaints with state officials against 16 production companies that show unprotected sex in porn movies.
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation filed the action with the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, alleging the practice amounts to unsafe behavior in a California workplace.“We will not stop until there is a policy of requiring condoms to be used in porn,” foundation president Michael Weinstein said.
By law, U.S. adult film actors must prove they have tested negative for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases within 30 days of going to work on a film.
CalOSHA spokesman Dean Fryer said the regulatory agency requires workers in any industry where there is a “possibility of transmission of fluids,” including health care and adult films, to reduce the risk of disease transmission.
“The employers of porn actors are required to provide a safe and healthy work environment,” Fryer said.
Nearly 60 adult DVDs accompany the complaints against Hustler Video, Maverick Entertainment, Vivid and other porn production companies in Los Angeles. Many people in the multibillion-dollar industry oppose the use of condoms in the films.
Hustler publisher Larry Flynt told The Associated Press, “people who enjoy viewing adult films do not want to see people using condoms.”
“While it might provide some additional protection, the sales are not going to be there to make the effort worthwhile for the actors and actresses,” he said.
Flynt praised laws mandating monthly testing for adult film actors as a highly effective way to prevent the spread of AIDS.
Vivid Entertainment head Steven Hirsch agreed.
“If we didn’t think the proper testing was in place, we would do something about it,” he said.
A call to Maverick was not immediately returned.
Weinstein said AIDS could be spread through the on-camera behavior and noted that many people get their sex education from porn movies.
Watching unprotected sex could prompt them to be careless during sex acts, he said.
Former porn actress Jan Meza said she asked about the use of condoms when she first started appearing in adult films in 2006.
“I was told that I would never get work again,” said Meza, who later contracted herpes.
Meza stopped appearing in films in 2007 and went to work for a charity group that provides safe haven to performers who want to leave the industry.
The labor complaints are part of the AIDS advocacy group’s broader campaign to mandate the use of condoms in porn.
Last month, it filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, calling on officials to enforce health and safety rules on adult film sets to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
In June, CalOSHA inspectors paid a surprise visit to the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation in San Fernando Valley, a clinic where an adult film actress recently tested positive for HIV.
The inspection was part of a broader investigation into the clinic, which has reported 22 other HIV cases since 2004. At least five performers for Vivid Entertainment, tested positive for HIV that year, prompting a brief self-imposed moratorium on porn production.
Fryer said CalOSHA is awaiting a court ruling on an injunction sought by the American Civil Liberties Union to prevent the agency from accessing medical files at the clinic.
“Our elected officials and our government are treating the young people who are performing in these films as trash that don’t deserve protection,” Weinstein said.
Weinstein said no state legislators have agreed to sponsor the group’s proposal to mandate condoms in porn movies.
Hirsch said the adult film industry would likely leave California if the use of condoms became mandatory.Another story that sounds too good to be true?
I’ve read comments that defend irresponsibility in the name of privacy and “sweet” profit making, (yeah, “sweet” profit before human health and well-being) 1st amendment rights, leave our bodies alone, etc. I have some rights too like not watching my stars commit slow barebacking suicide on my TV screen via disreputable film maker.
But I am not out to ask a government to force its view on the porn film industry. The film-makers’ callous disregard for their stars’ health and well-being and also the stars’ own foolish disregard for their well-being will reap a bitter harvest of its own.
But I should have a choice in knowingly buying 100% condom-use films same as the next guy should have the right to knowingly buy barebacking films.
My dollar will reward the decent film maker who cares enough about his stars to have them wear condoms and will reward the stars who care enough about themselves and about their partners to willingly and gladly wear a condom each time before anal sex.
I am not interested in watching revolting “party before you get sick and die” bareback porn movies. Any such movies I accidentally buy will go in the next trash collection to the county incinerator or landfill and I will accept no more brochures in the mail from any company that also makes or markets barebacking movies. Such things and such movies are not allowed in my house.
Wow I have to admit it is a little scary, but not surprising some of the comments that I’ve read on here so far. Some of you seem to feel that you should censor what other people get to watch, but you would be the first ones to bitch and complain if someone was attempting to do the same to something you might enjoy to see.
I don’t know, maybe this seems too obvious but I’ll give it a try. If you don’t like something, then don’t watch it instead of trying to force your feelings about said thing unto other people. I know that might be a radical thought for some of you, but just try it out and see if you like it.
As for the actors, well they know the risks going in. If for some reason they didn’t then that would be a different story, but for the most part they do. No one is forcing them to do anything.
If my memory serves me correctly, during the late 80s, early 90s no one was making bareback porn. All of a sudden, one producer started doing it and they all jumped on the band wagon. If they all agreed to make only safe-sex porn again, then the problem would be solved.
As for getting our sex education from porn — as gay men, most of us do. Agreed, we should be getting sex ed from school or at home, but how many parents are comfortable having the “straight” birds and bees conversation, let alone the gay version. And very few schools nowadays, thanks to the religious right, offer any kind of sex ed, and if they do they preach abstinence only!
I have yet to see the AIDS prevention specialists come up with an effective response to the barebacking phenomenon that began in the late nineties and is still going on today. IMO, it’s because the AIDS prevention groups stubbornly insisted on labeling barebacking as “bad” and trying to control people’s behavior instead of helping them to make better decisions.
From a purely physical standpoint, almost all gay men who enjoy intercourse would rather bareback. Period! (Even if it’s not politically correct to say so). So, it makes more sense to me that AIDS prevention efforts should assist gay men in doing what they are driven to do naturally…bareback. They can do this by helping men to make decisions about how to get the barebacking they want at a risk level that is acceptable to them. On the least risk-aversive side of the continuum, you have 1) rubbers until you find a partner, 2) after 3 months of rubber use, test to ensure that you’re of mutual HIV status, 3) bareback with just each other! And others may think through ways of barebacking that involve incrementally more risk…and individuals chose for themselves what is acceptable to them.
Note that the “do it only with a monogamous partner” option is right in line with common advice given by AIDS prevention groups since the late eighties–maybe earlier–but it’s framed as “how to get to the barebacking you really want!” instead of “don’t you dare bareback! rubbers all the time…be safe!!!”
There are limits.
I believe in health. I believe in ending (even better, curing) HIV and AIDs.
But I also believe in the First Amendment, and I also believe in the rights of performers and viewers to see what they wish, uncensored by people who wish to dictate the social policies and viewing materials of the American public.
Enough, already! They’re doing monthly testing. It’s not the performers you’re worried about, be honest – you wish to supress bareback sex, period.
Not your right. It is one more invasion into my, and millions of other Americans’, privacy.
I agree with this AIDS Foundation. Condoms should be required in the work place for porn actors.
ok this is so ridicules why are the people wasting there time on this so what they make bareback porn. and the reason that this group is apposed to this is cuz there man is not fucking them raw. leave the porn industry out of it. they are a business trying to make a sweet profit why not worry about the ppl that are infected or passing out condoms or something jeeze!!!
Maxx68,
How’s this for an idea? The only flicks I will allow in my house are ones where the actors are protecting themselves and their partners and taking responsibility for their health and well-being. If you market barebacking which is your right, know that I will keep you at a far distance by simply not bringing your barebacking films into my house. I feel revulsion not fantasy at beautiful young men putting their health in harm’s way for lack of a condom aka preservative in some European languages. (like in preserving and saving your health) To me Russian roulette and barebacking are simular. You don’t know exactly from whom your sexually transmitted disease or HIV/AIDS is coming from if you screw and get screwed always unprotected. Same as you gamble with that revolver up the side of your head. Not quite knowing from which chamber in the gun that bullet which enters your head is coming from.
Watching a barebacking film to me is like watching a man commit slow suicide. Because he is doing again and again with this man and that. When he is having unprotected sex with this guy and that guy it is the same as having sex with all this or that guy’s previous partners. Because it is not always known just from whom this virus or that came from and just many men were infected.
Watching a barebacking flick is also like watching guys happily partying before they get sick and maybe die. There is still no cure or vaccine for HIV and AIDS and if you don’t get those there are other STDs to acquire from unprotected sex.
If we shouldn’t police the porn producers, then I will vote with my dollar and banish those films from my TV that are comdonless. I have plenty of films with porn stars wearing condoms.
I want to see condoms on the men in the films I buy EVERY TIME before anal sex because it’s a sign that someone cares about both having fun and retaining good health at the same time.
“Weinstein said AIDS could be spread through the on-camera behavior and noted that many people get their sex education from porn movies.”
Here’s part of the problem, folks should be getting sex ed at home and in sex ed class at school.
Watching unprotected sex could prompt them to be careless during sex acts, he said.
Drinking alcohol or doing drugs can also lead to unprotected sex as well as just not giving a shit!
Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t the folks making the porn movies adults?
More regulating of one’s body. This is just another little effort to sneak more government into our personal lives.
“Weinstein said AIDS could be spread through the on-camera behavior and noted that many people get their sex education from porn movies.”
I don’t mean to sound cruel, but if you are getting your ’sex education’ from porn movies……..Darwinism is definitely doing its thing.
And I do not agree, Wayne. It is not porn producers job to ‘make you sexually safe”. That is YOUR job. No one has a gun to your head to go into porn or to accept having unprotected sex with a near-stranger.
If you want to work in the industry – then bring your own condoms and insist on using one. And if they forbid it, walk out the door and work somewhere else.
After all, there has to be SOME POINT where people are responsible for their own actions – and sexual safety.
I think all porn stars should attend mandatory STD education courses. However, it’s up to them if they want to participate in bareback movies or not. No one’s forcing them to fuck raw for the camera. If they feel that they’re at increased risk, they should just turn it down. Everyone participating in porn must be an adult anyway, and thus, they ought to approach it like responsible adults who accept the risks they put themselves into.
If producers of erotic entertainment are writing stories or creating drawings, then condoms are hardly needed. Let fantasies reign. When they work with actors in films, then they have a responsibility to take all possible steps to protect the health and safety of their workers.
I think it’s repulsive that some of the film industries are trying to duck their responsibilities to do the right things to avoid trashing the lives healthwise of the young men and women who star in these films. Especially not when today’s condoms in the films are transparent enough to let most of flesh oolor show through.