A ballot measure asking Los Angeles County voters whether porn actors should be required to wear condoms during filming has received enough signatures to qualify for the November 2012 election.
The initiative, one of the most explicit ever seen on a ballot, will be decided among voters in a county that is the nation’s most populous and also is headquarters of the U.S. porn industry.
The measure is backed by Los Angeles AIDS activists who say porn performers are at constant threat of HIV and sexually transmitted disease infection.
“The lives of these performers are not disposable,” AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein told The Times on Wednesday. “This industry is sending out the wrong message about safer sex.”
Many adult film producers oppose the initiative, saying that actors and actresses should be able to choose whether to use condoms.
Diane Duke of the adult film lobby group Free Speech Coalition could not be reached for comment late Wednesday. She has said previously that the condom measure was “government overreach into the way we make movies.”
And porn producers have said they tried using condoms in the late 1990s following an HIV scare, but it became clear that consumers were not interested in spending money on porn with condoms.
The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office late Tuesday “certified that the initiative received the sufficient number of signatures to qualify for the ballot,” Efrain Escobedo, manager of government and legislative affairs, confirmed to The Times Wednesday.
Latimesblogs.com
I don’t get why people who are not even in porn think they have the right to tell performers to wear condoms. It has nothing to do with them, & it is not their choice. People should be able to make their own decisions regarding what to do with their bodies, they don’t need babysitters.