OAKLAND, Calif – Following the May 21, 2015 Cal/OSHA Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board hearing, which was widely attended by members of the adult industry as well as HIV/AIDS, Sex Worker and LGBT advocacy groups that opposed the Board’s draft regulations, the Board has now issued ‘Proposed Modifications’ to its earlier draft, along with a 15-day notice soliciting written comments on the modifications.

TRPWL is in possession of the full 55-page document (which in large part summarizes the testimony and comments given at the May meeting or submitted in writing) and will provide detailed analysis of its new, substantive content soon.

However, as Mark Kernes notes at AVN, the Board’s published responses to the comments by long-time adult industry foes, including those from AHF and UCLA, were almost uniformly words of slobbering support.

One of the comments by former Cal/OSHA Chief Inspector Deborah Gold, Kernes notes, “was echoed by AHF’s Whitney Engeran-Cordova”:

“The ‘availability’ testing system (called PASS) discriminates unlawfully against persons with HIV.  The industry and individual employers cannot justify this discrimination as necessary, when the reasonable accommodation of using condoms or other barrier protection, and prohibiting ejaculation onto mucous membranes, eyes, and skin would protect employees against infection.”

Yeah, that’s right: Performers should be required to have sex with with people who are HIV-positive because after all, who ever heard of someone getting infected while using a condom, right?

The Board’s response? “The Board acknowledges the Commenter’s support and agrees the industry and individual employers can utilize simulations, condoms or other barrier protection and digital post-production techniques to protect workers against exposure, avoid discrimination and create a film in which the consumer will not view condoms.”

Incidentally, this is precisely the line of reasoning (if that’s the word for it) that Ernest Greene predicted long ago vis-a-vis cries of “employer discrimination” against HIV-positive individuals. In the topsy-turvy world of Cal/OSHA, whose mandate is to keep employees safe in the workplace, adult performers cannot and should not be prevented from having sex with HIV-positive individuals.

For now, here is the two page introduction:

SPOILER ALERT

Here’s a preview of one of the modified sections:

The object of the May 21 meeting, held in San Diego, was to review Cal/OSHA’s most recent collection of proposed porn set regulations, including mandated condoms. If enacted, porn would be all but unproducible in California, as the requirements of the proposed regs are jaw-droppingly draconian:

• “Sexual activity” requiring “condoms or other protective barriers” is defined as as vaginal, anal, and oral sex;
• “Post Exposure” medical follow-up, at employer expense, in the event a performer has “eye, mouth, other mucous membrane, non-intact skin, or parenteral contact” with “potentiallyinfectious materials” such as “pre-ejaculate, ejaculate, semen, vaginal secretions, fecal matter and rectal secretions, … and any other bodily fluid when visibly contaminated with blood or all bodily fluids in situations where it is difficult or impossible to differentiate between bodily fluids.”
• an array of mandatory vaccinations;
• garments or sheets touched by ejaculate or other fluids to be treated as hazardous waste;
• “Personal Protective Equipment” required for performances such as squirting scenes, which prevent bodily fluids “from passing through to or reaching the employee’s eyes, mouth, or other mucous membranes” (think goggles and face shields).
• performer and employer training, and mandatory safety meetings prior to a scene;
• producers (“employers”) pay for performer testing;
• a plethora of burdensome medical record-keeping requirements (such as the maintaining of medical records for “at least the duration of employment plus 30 years”) that are likely to raise privacy concerns among performers.

Due to the forced vaccination requirements, 26-year olds might become the new MILFs (as explained here).

The proposed regulations were (and are) intended to supercede those currently in effect, embodied in California Code of Regulations Title 8 Sec. 5193. Those regs were written for medical clinics and mortuaries back in the 1990s, and mandate “barrier protections” for healthcare workers exposed to blood or infectious materials.

Under Sec. 5193, anything you wouldn’t want to happen to you in the course of your duties in a clinic (such as having someone ejaculate or squirt on you, or penetrate you), became a forbidden “exposure event” in the context of adult film sets — even though such “exposure” was the job itself.

As TRPWL reported on Feb. 3,

Egged on by AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), Cal/OSHA has undertaken to create a brand new code section, Sec. 5193.1, and the latest draft, dated 12-1-2014, makes it crystal clear that what you or I call “porn”, Cal/OSHA calls impermissible “exposure”, requiring detailed documentation and record-keeping, medical follow-up, etc…

Opposition

Among those voicing opposition to the regulations unless amended are the American Civil Liberties Union, the County of Los Angeles Commission on HIV, San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Equality California, the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee (APAC), which represents adult performers.

The new Cal/OSHA regulations are the result of a five-year campaign by Michael Weinstein, of the controversial AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Weinstein has called adult performers a threat to public health, and is currently funding a ballot measure that would pay him personally to review all adult films produced in the state of California for condoms, as a taxpayer-funded “porn czar.”

Weinstein’s campaign has drawn ire of local and national health officials, who have accused him of fomenting a crisis where none exists. The County of Los Angeles Commission on HIV recently voted to oppose the new regulations unless amended, and, at a commission meeting earlier this year, Mario Perez, director of HIV and STD programs for Los Angeles County, was vocal in his opposition to the proposed regulations:

“As we think about the HIV and STD epidemics in our county, there continues to be … a disproportionate amount of energy and attention on an area that is not contributing to new HIV infections,” Perez testified to the Commission. “The epidemiology just isn’t there for folks to continue to harp on this issue.”

The industry’s preferred amended regulations, additional testimony, data analysis and statements from public health officials can be found at OurBodiesOurChoice.com.