Porn Panic 2012: LA County Condom Mandate Initiative Officially Makes November Ballot. It's WAR Time, Folks.

While everyone is being entertained by the Great Porn Testing War between the Free Speech Coalition/APHSS/Cutting Edge Testing and the Shy Love/Talent Testing Services factions, no one has mentioned that all this show and blow could still be rendered irrelevant if Michael Weinstein gets his wish and imposes a condom mandate over Los Angeles County, as he already has over the city of LA.

And today, Weinstein and his AIDS Healthcare Foundation flunkies are one November ballot measure away from pulling the proverbial rug out of everyone.

The Los Angeles Times dropped the bomb this morning.

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 election, a county elections official said.

The initiative, one of the most explicit ever seen on a ballot, will be decided by voters in a county that is the nation's most populous and headquarters of the U.S. porn industry.

Los Angeles AIDS activists and other supporters say porn performers are at constant risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

"The lives of these performers are not disposable," AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein said 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 measure was " government overreach into the way we make movies." Porn producers have said they tried using condoms in the late 1990s following an HIV scare, but consumers were not interested in spending money on porn with condoms.

Weinstein said his group collected 371,000 signatures in five months, far exceeding the 232,000 signatures needed to qualify the measure for the ballot. The county Board of Supervisors must take the final step of placing the measure on the ballot.

If approved by voters, the measure will require adult film producers to pay a fee and obtain a permit from the county Department of Public Health. Actors will then be required to use condoms for acts of anal and vaginal sex. County officials will have the authority to suspend or revoke the permit for violations, and could follow up with civil fines or misdemeanor criminal charges, according to the AIDS group's petition.

Weinstein said he was confident of success. The AIDS group released the results of a March poll of more than 1,000 likely voters, which said that 63% would vote yes.

"The people are ahead of the politicians on this issue," Weinstein said. "There's never been something on the ballot as sexually explicit as this, so it's going to be excellent education for people."

The requirement would apply to filming in unincorporated areas of the county and 85 of its 88 cities, including Los Angeles. The cities of Pasadena, Long Beach and Vernon have their own public health departments.

In fact, this gets much, much worse...because the story doesn't factor in the continuing and ongoing efforts of Cal-OSHA to procure regulations on "barrier protection" in the taping of sexual acts within porn, which would include not only condoms for anal and vaginal sex, but probably oral as well. Those regulations would probably become the template for enforcing any condom mandate law....and they could be enforced not only in LA County, but nationwide, since it's likely that the national branch of OSHA would be more than interested in the outcome.

And...this isn't just an issue for big porn studios, either. The authorities have every intention of applying the law not just to porn shoots, but to even private personal websites and cam services...in fact, anyone who makes any kind of sex scene for their own profit would have to apply for a permit AND impose condoms..even if they are married, monogamous, and totally free of STD's....all for the sake of generating money for Weinstein's enterprises driving the porn industry into the underworld some false sense of protection from STD's and HIV.

In short, the war we have been fearing is now upon us, and time is running short.

I don't live in Los Angeles County, so my vote won't count in this ....but if you do, and you are a fan of adult sexual media and you actually give a damn about its continued existence and the right of performers to make their own choices without misguided (if well intentioned) bureaucrats telling you how to engage in sex, you really, really need to follow this upcoming mandate campaign....and then turn out to vote.

Otherwise, we may wake up next year and find that the Lubben/Weinstein Model has been imposed nationwide and your personal sex life becomes an open fishbowl for public view and exposure and policing by the Condom Nazis.

My suggestion to Shy Love/TTS and Diane Duke/CET/APHSS?? Bury the hatchet, agree to disagree, and ally together against this proposal and all other attempts to impose this law. If there ever was a time for the industry to unite and fight, it is now.