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• I will say this again. The wrong arguments were made from the beginning and they're still being made.

  When you talk about lost jobs and the so-called "anti-business" climate in the same breath as expressing your concern for performer health an confidence in the existing system of safeguards you sound about as credible as the Koch brother talking about "clean coal."

  The good arguments were always about performer safety, which this measure compromises, performer choice, which this measure destroys, and performer confidentiality, which this measure endangers.

  The emphasis should always have been on the high quality of the existing safeguards and the unmatched record of success they've produced over a period of years, the right of performers as consenting adults to make their own decisions in this most intimate of matters and the First Amendment implications of compelled speech, which are far broader than anything having to do with porn. If the government can compel you to deliver one kind of message with the artistic product you create there is nothing to stop them from preventing you from delivering a different message through your work.

  These were winning issues and we should have stuck with them. Every dollar-based objection to this measure was just ammunition for those who consider all porn producers no better than pimps and all performers to be trafficked, intimidated victims who stick up for their bosses out of fear.

  The other track we should have taken was a more vigorous examination of the sponsors of this legislation and there vested interests in the outcome. AHF is in the condom trade. Isadore Hall, whose own district has staggering levels of HIV infection and not a single AHF clinic, is clearly in it for the money and some good investigative journalism could have exposed the corrupt connection between this hack and Weinstein's organization, which in its arrogant stupidity actually demanded an invoice from Tim Tritch, AIM's former lab messenger, for the money it paid him to act as an infiltrator and informer for AHF's successful campaign to destroy AIM. These guys are dirtier than the bottom of a city bus and for a business that people think of as pretty tough we let them tap-dance all over us with no consequences.

  The reality of politics is that you have to have a strong position you know how to defend that will play for the electorate you need to reach and the will to throw a good scare into those who make a profession out of fucking with you.

  Did we have any of that? I saw some signs of it here and there, but our side campaigned mainly as a bunch of greedy whiners and that is not a good look.

  In the end, I doubt this legislation will pass because it's too woolly for most elected officials to handle. And even if it does it will eventually be litigated out of existence because it's patently unconstitutional. But how much money, time and energy will be wasted, and how many people endangered, before all that comes to pass?

  If this industry, which has fought off the federal government for decades, can't shut down a loud-mouthed charity pimp and a sleazy crooked politician from a district with traditionally low voter turnouts, it's lost its mojo very seriously and needs to get it back and soon.

  • A question for Ernest Greene, did you suspect that there was something wrong with Tim Tritch when he was involved with AIM?