Adult film-makers say they could abandon US porn capital because of legal requirement for performers to wear condoms.
Actors in adult movies filmed in Los Angeles will be required to use condoms under an ordinance signed into law by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, in a move that industry leaders say could lead them to abandon the nation’s porn capital.
Officials with the Aids Healthcare Foundation, which lobbied for years for such a law, welcomed the decision and said they would turn their attention to getting a similar condom requirement adopted elsewhere.
“The city of Los Angeles has done the right thing. They’ve done the right thing for the performers,” said Michael Weinstein, president of the foundation, which had pushed for the measure for six years.
He said its adoption was crucial in protecting adult film actors from HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Weinstein said his group’s next move would be to get Los Angeles county to adopt a similar measure for its unincorporated areas.
The group has launched a petition drive to put the issue on the ballot, but Weinstein said he hoped the county’s board of supervisors would follow the lead of the Los Angeles city council and pass such an ordinance itself. The council gave its final approval last week.
Industry officials estimate as many as 90% of the porn films produced in the US are made in Los Angeles. Most are filmed in the city’s suburban San Fernando Valley.
After the council’s action, several of the industry’s biggest film-makers said they might consider moving just outside the county. That prompted the mayor of Simi Valley, Bob Huber, to announce last week he would ask the city attorney for his community, located just across the county line from the San Fernando Valley, to write a similar ordinance.
Weinstein said his group would also be vigilant in keeping track of where porn producers might go.
Exactly how the law will be enforced is still to be determined. It calls for makers of porn films to pay a fee, the amount still to be determined, that would be used to pay for spot-checks at filming locations.
The city council is creating a committee to determine the amount of the fee and who would make the spot checks.
Weinstein said he envisaged enforcement would fall to nurses or other public health providers.
“It is not anticipated, based on what we desire or what has been discussed, that it would be uniformed police officers,” he said. Weinstein said he would be open to working with industry leaders to enforce the law.
He noted the ordinance does not require condoms when oral sex is involved because his group, which originally crafted it, agreed with the film-makers that the risk of infection through oral sex was not as great as through other sex acts.
The industry already requires that actors be tested for HIV every 30 days, and film-makers say they believe that is sufficient.
“It’s not that I don’t doubt the sincerity of their desire to protect the talent. And, believe it or not, we have the same ambition,” Christian Mann, general manager of Evil Angel Productions, said last week after the council’s vote. “We just don’t believe their way is the best way.”
Source. The Guardian
