L.A. County Voters to Decide If Porn Actors Must Wear Condoms

Thursday, August 02, 2012

Voters in Los Angeles County will decide in November whether adult film actors should be required to wear condoms.

The initiative, approved for the ballot by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, was spearheaded by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which collected 371,000 signatures supporting the plan. The city of Los Angeles passed a similar ordinance in January.   

The foundation’s president, Michael Weinstein, said the law is meant to protect sex performers from AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The industry has been temporarily shut down occasionally since 2004, as some porn actors have proved positive for HIV.

If it becomes law, the mandate would force pornography producers to get a health permit from the county Department of Public Health before making their movies. Producers in the multibillion-dollar porn business, centered around Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley just north of it, have threatened to leave the state if the new rules pass.

Porn star Ron Jeremy is excited at the prospect of taking the whole industry to neighboring Arizona. “The community could embrace it,” Jeremy said. “And maybe even do like an advertisement. ‘Are you fed up with California and their laws, Las Vegas? Come to Arizona; you know we treat you right.’ “

That is not exactly welcome news in Arizona where Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said porn shoots would be treated like prostitution. “The exchange of money or anything of value for sexual conduct is prohibited,” he said. “In fact it gets to Arizona's definition of prostitution.”

The porn industry generates an estimated $4 billion in sales and provides 10,000 to 20,000 jobs annually to actors, makeup artists, camera crews, caterers and support staff.

–Noel Brinkerhoff and Ken Broder

 

To Learn More:

Should Porn Actors Wear Condoms? Los Angeles County Voters Will Decide (by Matt Reynolds, Courthouse News Service)

Porn Condom Measure Qualifies For Ballot (by Rong-Gong Lin II, Los Angeles Times)

California Porn Industry May be Migrating . . . to AZ  (by Anita Roman, Fox News)

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