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• Zzzzz

• Every time this happens they do the happy dance at AHF and the usual pond-scum bloggers come bubble to the surface with more toxic gas but the facts don't change. Testing detects infections early and PASS generates warnings which result in performer stand-downs until everybody involved is re-tested.

  If that's such a lousy system, I'd like to know the answer to one simple question that's been bugging me since this whole controversy started:

  Why aren't we all dead?

  If testing doesn't work and condoms are the be-all and end-all of protection, how is that on the het side of the business where we test everyone we've had a total of two unambiguously documented cases of on-set HIV transmission since uniform testing began.

  On the gay side where they don't test and rely on condoms only they've had over 150 AIDS-related deaths among performers.

  Measure B doesn't include testing. Supporters of Measure B only mention testing as an afterthought when pressed.

  Clearly, they still hold to the quaint belief that condoms superfluous. Given that even Derek Burts, AHF's poster rent-boy, claims to have been infected on a condom-only gay production, you'd think someone would raise the question of why this obvious double standard isn't an issue.

  Inquiring minds want to know.

  One thing they'll find out is that mandatory testing for HIV or even asking about a potential hire's HIV status is illegal under California's anti-discrimination laws. That's why all these ballot measures and other mandate-based schemes don't concern themselves with the method that's kept us all alive for the past dozen years. Testing is only legal if its voluntary and not a condition of hiring. Therefore it can't be written into AHF's grandiose political plans or even into Cal-OSHA's safety protocols.

  The thing that makes us safest is something we have to do ourselves without Big Brother standing over us with a stick and Big Brother doesn't like that.

  IMO, there should be a single standard for all performers regardless of orientation and that standard must include required bi-monthly testing. Everything else is bullshit. No one who is HIV+ should be performing sex acts in any part of the industry, condoms or no, and that's exactly what will happen if idiocies like Measure B survive court tests and become law.

  Fortunately, the chances of that happening are still quite slim, as the measure is unconstitutional on the face of it and in federal courts they tend to go more by the law and less by the latest local political spats.

• Touché pointing out California anti-discrimination laws as an excuse ...now show us what the industry has done to LEGALLY remove this obvious impediment created by regulations and regulators who didn't consult the industry in their creation, or enactment. Where are the lawsuits, press releases, advisory meetings or any other evidence that the industry has advocated in California or Federally to have their unique needs met?

  Other industries with much less at stake saw these Federally mandated laws as an impediment to their usual way of business and took action. Once that happened, even outside your state it never occurred to the industry..gee that's what we could too?

  Never occurred to all your Medical and Legal advisors to use the fact that NOT knowing if someone is "medically diagnosed" with certain conditions, or has "medical limitations" where the nature of expected duties performed could harm them and/or deny the industry the opportunity to provide reasonable accommodations that would enable them to perform the expected duties....hmmm guess those other lawyers are just dumb schlubs or maybe those industries aren't picked on and persecuted the way yours is....or those jurisdictions gave them different rights of advocacy? Must be over my silly uneducated head.