‘Performative sex is utterly different from private sex’: A porn star takes on the Calif. State Capitol

Adult performer Lorelei Lee is desperately lobbying ahead of tomorrow’s vote on a bill mandating condoms in porn

Adult star Lorelei Lee is used to playing different roles — naughty nurse clad in latex, sexy teacher wielding a ruler — but today she’s playing a part rarely fetishized in porn: a lobbyist in the California State Capitol. That’s because tomorrow AB 1576, a bill that will mandate condoms in the adult industry in California, will go to vote. She, along with more than 500 performers who have come out against the bill, says it will hurt the industry it is ostensibly meant to protect.

If the bill passes tomorrow, Lee says it will mean a mass exodus of the adult industry from California. ”The actual situation that will be created if this bill becomes law has already been demonstrated in L.A. County after the passage of Measure B,” she said, referring to the condom mandate passed in 2012. “Since that time there has been a 95 percent reduction in adult film permit applications.” Indeed, Peter Acworth, the CEO of Kink.com, which is headquartered in a former armory in San Francisco, has threatened to decamp to Las Vegas if the bill is put into law.

Big production companies might be able to move out of state, but others will just shoot illegally, she argues, and that makes performers less safe. ”When our jobs are illegal, they not only become more dangerous, they also become more stigmatized,” she says. “In a time when porn performers already face the abrupt closing of our bank accounts, discrimination in hiring and in housing applications, and a risk of firing from other non-sex-work jobs we might obtain, the question of our livelihood moving underground becomes one of survival.”

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