The Panic Works: Measure B Passes With 55% Of The Vote. The Requiem, The Legal Challenges, And The Future

Well...in spite of the spirited efforts and passionate campaign, in the end the gold made the rules.

The condom initiative known as Measure B was headed for passage with 55 percent of the vote as of this moment, and barring any last second miracles, Michael Weinstein and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, along with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and the California state branch of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, will get the authority to force condoms and other forms of obtrusive barrier protections onto porn shoots in most of Los Angeles County.

From the reaction of many performers whom have made LA County their home for the past few years, and have depended on the good will of the community for their livelihood, this loss will seem like nothing short of a punch in the crotch, a giant betrayal of a legal tax-paying community of enterpreneurs and workers whose only crime was to make and perform sex videos for their entertainment.

This isn't to say that the issue is settled, of course....I'm betting that the legal battle to overturn Measure B is already being planned, since a similar battle is already in the works to challenge a similar law passed by the City of Los Angeles (which now will be adjusted to mesh with the stronger county ordinance now passed). But, while the industry renders the now painful choice of whether to stay and fight or pick up their stakes and move to newer, less hostile venues, there is still the postgame analysis of how Measure B still passed even with the strong and passionate arguments of opponents, as well as what the diaspora of porn professionals can plan on in the future.

The key element, to say the least, was AHF's money. When you have a budget of well over $100 million, you can afford to buy the loyalty of plenty of people and manipulate the process. The collusion between the LA County Council of Supervisors, CalOSHA, and AHF has been well documented both here and elsewhere, along with the ability to cut TV commercials featuring the two primary protagonists of the last significant HIV scares, Darren James and Derrick Burts, against an opposition that was essentially reduced to Twitter bombs, YouTube videos, and the occasional radio commercial. The latter campaign more than made up in intensity what they lacked in financial resources...and they appeared to have far more effective arguments and facts at their side. The problem was, though, all the facts in the world are useless if the majority of the electorate refuses to listen to them, or are simply overwhelmed by the driving rainstorm of distortions.

The second element was timing. AHF had nearly two to three years to plan and execute their offensive, starting from the vendetta and ultimately successful closing of the Adult Industry Medical Foundation clinic that had been the main STI testing clinic for performers, and then conniving with CalOSHA and LACDPH to promote the "only condoms can save the industry" meme. The industry was either too distracted by their own petty squabbles (Free Speech Coalition vs. certain talent agents; Cutting Edge Testing vs. Talent Testing; Manwin vs. everyone else) or too assuming of their economic weight in Los Angeles County....and by the time the threat was seen and forces assembled, the syphilis scare featuring the misplaced antics of Mr. Marcus siphoned off critical resources and time that could have been used to deflect the attack. (I'm not going to blame Marcus personally, just explaining how that controversy distracted from the main battle.)

But to me, speaking as the outsider here, a significant factor in Measure B's passage was what I see as the main opponents' complete misreading of the base electorate of Los Angeles County, and the assumptions that they would automatically be moved by certain arguments based on libertarian conservative beliefs about "less government" intervention. This is not intended to be an attack on James Lee of the No On Government Waste group or Michael Whiteacre or Sean Tompkins of The Real Porn Wikileaks, whom have been nothing short of supurb and have left everything on the field in the opposition effort. However, I do think that the theme of emphasizing conservative themes of "government intervention" and "attacking legitimate small business" completely missed the nature of appealing to a much more moderate, if not liberal/progressive, electorate, and allowed AHF way too many outs of counter appeals. Not tying the NoOnB effort effectively enough to the larger efforts against the statewide "anti-sex trafficking" initiative Proposition 35 (which also passed last night) was, in my personal opinion, a bad move that would become costly...especially in the wake of the synergy between the slut shaming paternalism of the anti-"sex trafficking" movement and the underlying attitudes of proponents of Measure B.

Both campaigns reflect (for all of Gail Dines' rhetoric against "neoliberalism" as an elitist assault on the majority of women supposedly under attack by the evil Capitalist Male Porn Conspiracy) the actual sexual paternalistic neoliberalism of professional, upwardly mobile celebrities, reinforced with the "expertise" of fly-by-night armchair psychoanalysts cloaked with doctorates and Cosmopolitan atttitudes about the wonderfulness of sexuality..as long as it is conditioned within the proper boundaries of "safety".

For these folk, condoms represent what monogamy used to represent for sexual neoliberals in the 1980's during the HIV pandemic: both a safe zone to experiment sex freely AND a means to impose an only slightly less restrictive sexual ghetto and seperate themselves from the rabble of those evil "promiscuous" out-of-control sluts who "make us look like libertines". It's essentially the same mentality that political neoliberals have had against working class folks whom are outside of their charmed circle, the "dependent" welfare poor, the "shiftless" and "lazy" ghetto Black/Brown male....but set in a more benelovent, paternalistic, loving, lecturing tone than the typical "let them eat shit and die" mentality of the Religious/Tea Party Right.

Bear in mind, of course, that there were supporters of Measure B who were and are genuinely sincere about protecting performers from the scourge of sexually transmitted infections, and whom generally do see the condom mandate as one tool of enhanced protection. I may ultimately disagree with performers like Brittany Andrews and activists like Chi Chi LaRue, two principled activists for mandatory condom usage, but in no way will I disrespect their right to their views and their sincerity in their concerns.

However, the potential impact of this new law (all the legal challenges aside) stands cogent to the fact that there is still a lot of education of the public that needs to be done....and that just because someone isn't a fundamentalist or a radical feminist does NOT mean that they can't be suspectible to the politics and emotions of slut-shaming....even regardless of the general rout of the most virulent forms of misogyny and sex hate last night through the massive political rout delivered for President Barack Obama.

And, just as progressives and the Left now beginning to resurge in power nationally need to be educated by activist sex workers and their consensual clients and fans and consumers on the importance of defending core sexual liberties, so too must porn professionals face the fact that the broader electorate is changing and being transformed to be more diverse and more liberal/progressive, even more radical. Appealing merely to Whites with money and libertarian conservative appeals simply isn't going to cut it much longer with a younger, racially diverse, and politically more astute coalition of fans and consumers; and it's past time that progressive porn performers follow the lead of pioneers like James Deen, Dana deArmond, Stoya, Amber Lynn, Kylie Ireland, and the Greatest Goddess of them all, Nina Hartley, and become more outspoken about defending porn and sexual freedom/liberation on progressive political principles. Not that libertarians like Steven St. Croix shouldn't matter, of course, but it's time to cover the entire spectrum.

But, while that develops, bring on the lawyers. This battle is NOT over, by any means.

The Big Lie Campaign For Measure B Ends With The Grandmama Of All Lies: The "Porn Stars Have More STI's Than Nevada Hookers" Smear

Tomorrow is Election Day, folks...and while most of the country will be busy enough with the spectacle that has been the Presidential campaign, folks in LA County will be putting the fate of the local adult industry literally in their hands with the proposed condom mandate proposal Measure B.

I have to say that whatever doubts I had about James Lee and the Citizens Against Government Waste have been absolutely doused by the yeoman efforts he and his group have done in leading the opposition to this proposal. With not much time and with a fraction of the budget that the AIDS Healthcare Foundation has to pour into the pro-B campaign, and with none of the organized support of the political establishment in LA County (save for the opposition by the local Republican and Libertarian parties), they have done a tremendous job of raising awareness and organizing performers to defend their rights. I tip my hat to you for that, win or lose.

Plus....gotta do a shoutout for Sean Tompkins over at The Real Porn Wikileaks, Michael Whiteacre, Mark Kernes, Dr. Chauntelle Tibalis, Lydia Lee, Steven St. Croix, Kylie Ireland, Kayden Kross, Amber Lynn, Tanya Tate, Rebecca Bordeaux, Maggie Mayhem, and a whole host of other producers, performers, reporters, and other assorted glitterati for their efforts in educating the public on this legislation and how it will basically destroy the industry without any positive impacts on actual STI infections. It's amazing how political ideology tends to melt away when faced with a shared threat from outside.

It is to the measure of the principled opposition to Measure B that the proponents have been forced to engage in nothing less than distortions of facts and outright lies and cooking up of stats in order to sell their vision of a condomized industry "protecting" performers while driving them underground into less safe parameters and venues.

But, nothing beats the desperate final flail that AHF attempted to pull on the public this last weekend.

On last Friday, AHF and their champions at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health released their contraption of a "study" of infection rates of porn performers during the past 11 months; concluding that the rate of infection for chlamydia and gonnorhea among performers was greater than not only the infection rate amongst LA County citizens as a whole, but also greater than the rate of infection of prostitutes working in Nevada's legalized brothels.

The study was released by an organization calling itself the American Sexually Transmitted Disease Association; and while the complete report is hidden behind a paywall, the abstract of the report pretty much gives away the ideological bias (bolding added for emphasis):

Background: Undiagnosed sexually transmitted infections (STIs) may be common in the adult film industry because performers frequently engage in unprotected oral and anal intercourse, STIs are often asymptomatic, and the industry relies on urine-based testing.

Methods: Between mid-May and mid-September 2010, a consecutive sample of adult film industry performers recruited from a clinic in Los Angeles, California, that provides medical care to performers was offered oropharyngeal, rectal, and urogenital testing for Gonorrhea, and rectal and urogenital testing for Chlamydia.

Results: During the 4-month study period, 168 participants were enrolled: 112 (67%) were female and 56 (33%) were male. Of the 47 (28%) who tested positive for Gonorrhea and/or Chlamydia, 11 (23%) cases had been detected through urogenital testing alone. Gonorrhea was the most common STI (42/168; 25%) and the oropharynx the most common site of infection (37/47; 79%). Thirty-five (95%) oropharyngeal and 21 (91%) rectal infections were asymptomatic. Few participants reported using condoms consistently while performing or with their personal sex partners.

Conclusions: Adult film industry performers had a high burden of STIs. Undiagnosed asymptomatic rectal and oropharyngeal STIs were common and are likely reservoirs for transmission to sexual partners inside and outside the workplace. Performers should be tested at all anatomical sites irrespective of symptoms, and condom use should be enforced to protect workers in this industry.

Keep in mind that this study was taken during four months during 2010, when the main testing agency at that time for the industry, the Adult Industry Medical Foundation (AIM), was under attack by the very forces (namely, AHF and the LA County DPH) now saying that their testing procedures were (and by extension, those of the newly formed APHSS system are) totally inadequate for detecting and treating STI's, and that only mandatory condom usage and other forms of compulsory "barrier protection" would offer the highest form of "protection" for performers.

Even without that caveat, the holes in this argument can be spotted, and are enough to drive a whole fleet of Mack trucks through.

First off, 47 of 168 performers testing positive for chlamydia or gonnorhea still leaves 121 performers (72%) who tested clean of those STI's. In short, in a supposed "high-risk" industry where porn performers are assumed to be mindless sluts who fuck and suck anything that moves, 7 out of every 10 performers still manage to protect themselves and stay disease free without the need for condoms. Wouldn't you think that if testing was as much a failure as this study would assume, the rate of infection would be far greater than that??

Plus, as Michael Whiteacre has noted repeatedly, this "study" gives no background on whether those performers who were infected got infected on set during scenes, or through outside activities...or, whether they actually did perform scenes after their infections were caught. And, it may be that many of those who were tested and found to be infected didn't even perform any scenes until they were adequately treated, or were people just entering the industry engaged in their first test.

There's also the possibility of the same performer being tested multiple times in the same period through repeated follow-up testing, but being counted as seperate and distinct infections for the purpose of deliberate cooking of the stats to beef up the ideological case. Goodness knows, AHF and the Condom Nazis over at LACDPH aren't known for that, now aren't they??

Then, there is the distortion about the method of testing involved. The current testing regimen (and the former one used by AIM) utilizes urine sampling for their testing of chlamydia and gonnorhea (with oral swabbing available upon request of the tested performer); yet the "study" claimed that the system was flawed by not detecting oral or anal infection via swabbing of the throats or anuses of performers. At best, it's a call for broadening such testing to include oral and anal swabbing; but, that's not what AHF and LACDPH paid the producers of that "study" to promote; so, they just use that stat as just another club to slam the industry into compliance with the condom mandate.

Or, as Hymes and Kernes points out succintly in their debunking of the AHF/ASTDA "study":

Perhaps worst of all, the study is utterly disingenuous when it describes how and when performers get tested. Fully cognizant of the fact that performers are not allowed to perform on the overwhelming majority of porn sets without a valid test that is no more than 28 (or 14, depending on the studio) days old, the authors nonetheless included in their study 51 performers—nearly one-third of all performers tested—who had not worked in an adult film for more than 30 days, making the time and place of their exposure impossible to pin down, and very likely not on an adult film set at all.

That percentage is extraordinarily important, considering that of the 168 "adult performers" who took part in this study, only 47 (28 percent) had at least one undiagnosed STD—and that's 2 percent less than the number of performers (30 percent) who hadn't made a movie in at least 30 days, and whose infections, if they had sought film work while still infected, might very well have been caught by the normal industry testing, especially if they had any specific complaints and requested that an (optional) oral swab be taken and tested.

And also keep in mind that many performers even require a clean test as recent as 2-3 days before they accept someone to perform sex scenes with...so if anything, the industry is even more stringent about screening for STI's than even the 14/28 day period that is the "gold standard". In other words, how many of the 48% who were found to be infected were also part of the 33% who had not performed for at least 30 days prior to getting tested? Again, this may support expanding testing to better catch orally and anally based infections, but that's not on the scope of AHF's agenda..so it's simply ignored in favor of pushing Measure B. Nice diversion there, Mike Weinstein.

The main distortion, though, that has gotten the attention of the media, is the comparison of porn performers in LA County with Nevada brothel sex workers, who are claimed to be much, much safer due to the wonders of mandated condoms and government regulation.

Problem is, though, that in Nevada brothels, it is the clients who are required to use condoms, not the sex workers themselves. Also, the prostitutes who work in the brothels are subjected to far greater regulatory scrutiny while they work there; including far-reaching restrictions on whom they can have sex within their workplace, and strong discouragement of sexual activities outside of the brothel. Plus, they are screened for disease even before they are even allowed to work in the brothels to begin with. You simply can't compare them to porn performers, who do happen to have outside personal sex lives and, outside of their occupation, do in fact have intimate and personal sex lives.

Unless, of course, you are under the misimpression and assumption that by fiat ALL porn performers are by definition the embodiment of the caricature of the late and dearly departed John Holmes: namely, mindless promiscuous sluts who can't think of anything more than where their next daily or hourly serving of dick or pussy comes from, until they are either claimed by "the wages of sin" that inevitably comes with defying God (or the Goddess) or find the religion of Shelley Lubben (or Gail Dines) and "save themselves".


Nevertheless, the publicity accomodating the "study" has had some impact on some public opinions...in particular some progressive personalities whom had originally came out against Measure B. One in particular is Ana Kasparian, blogger and YouTube diarist connected with Cenk Uygur's popular progressive network The Young Turks, whom originally came out opposed to Measure B last week in a video..but was convinced to flip to the other side by one of her colleagues, Jayar Jackson, following the release of the AHF/ASTDA "study" via the Huffington Post.

This is in spite of the fact that contrary to the notion of porn being a right-wing libertarian outlet of "rugged individualism", there is actually a genuine diversity of political ideological positions within the community of porn performers and producers. For every Jenna Jameson or John Stagliano, you will find a Nina Hartley or an Amber Lynn; there are quite a few porn performers and producers who are staunch liberals/progressives or even centrists as there are "libertarian conservatives". Of course, personal political ideology should not affect the quality or the merits of the arguments for or against Measure B; but the fact that so few progressives have seen fit to even take a stand for or against this initiative speaks wonders about the broader Left's lack of education or commitment on core issues of sexual freedom, sexual civil liberties, and respect for personal choice. (A strong criticism of the TYT turnaround and of the "study" can be found here.)

The other blowback from this "study" is the newly created propaganda campaign by some of the original propaganda boosters of the condom mandate to distort the claims of the opposition and launch personal adhominen attacks on their opponents. One such propagandist is Tim Tirch, who has been well known for his drive-by slanders against all who oppose the AHF agenda, and whom had actually been exposed as a serial troll who menaced blogs picking fights with particular condom opponents. Over at Cindi Loftus' Luke Is Back blog, a commentor ID'd as "XXXMed" (and whom is suspected to be Tirch) has been posting guest editorial posts maligning opponents of Measure B with, shall we say, very personal attacks. One such editorial went after Nina Hartley and her husband Ernest Greene (whom, as you know, is a frequent contributor to BPPA and one of the principled opponents of the condom mandate) for hypocrisy in their current stances, since they were during the 1990s both advocates of condom usage. (That Nina and Ernest's stance back then was predicated on the lack of a testing and screening system for STI's that does exist today, and that both have consistently defended the voluntary use of condoms as well as the discouragement of more high-risk sexual acts more suspectible to STI's, seems to escape the synapses of this fool.) More recently, "XXXMed" has been involved in an exchange of posts with Mark Kernes in which the former has defended the AHF/ASTDA study as legitimate proof for mandating condoms, implying that Kernes has been "trivializing" the rate of STI's among female porn performers, and that he slandered a rival testing agency to AIM by implying that they were the source of performer tests in the aformentioned study. (One of the authors of that "study" just so happened to be the founder and lead doctor of that testing agency.  See the original Kernes story for background.)

But, the greatest revelation about this latest final propaganda push is how it reveals the shifting goalposts of the condom mandate campaign, and how it conflates different STI's for blatant propaganda purposes.

Remember that the main spokespeople for Measure B just so happen to be the last two performers who happened to contract HIV...namely, Darren James and Derrick Burts. Of course, the fact that there has been NO instance since 2004 of HIV being transmitted on set by a porn shoot in LA County (remember, Burts has admitted he was infected in a Florida gay male set where condoms were actually used; and James has been reported to have been infected on a trip to Brazil just prior to the infamous shoot where 4 other performers were infected with him) really messes up the meme of an HIV pandemic. So, here comes Plan B: expand the STI "panic" to include other infections like chlamydia and gonnorhea, which were tested as part of the former AIM regimen....except that unless you cook the books to invent multiple infections, you can't prove that that exists, either. So, onward to Plan C: simply invent a crisis by implying the lack of testing of other STI's such as Hepatitis C or HPV or herpes, and then scream about how the "pornographers" are putting wimmen's lives AT RISK because they care more about their money or the "selfishness" of the consumers than about public safety. (Because, of course, the lives of gay men who already suffer from STI's in spite of already using condoms is inmaterial to the proponents of Measure B.) And, if all that fails, exploit the recent syphilis scare to seal the deal...never mind that syphilis can be easily spread even with a condom through mouth sores that condoms can't even cover.

Note also the essential fact that unlike HIV (or herpes or HPV) chlamydia and gonnorhea are mostly asymptommatic infections, in which those infected usually don't even notice any known symptoms of the infections (sores, rashes, pain, swelling, etc.) Therefore, you really can't even tell if you even have the infection until it shows up in testing. The fact that most of those in the study who were infected were also found to be asymptommatic raises a real question about the entire logic of the study: How could they know that those 3 out of 10 performers who were infected actually were infected on the job?? Or, do they just ASSUME that they are, in order to justify their premade biases and conclusions?

It simply shows that ultimately, underneath all the flowery cover of "concern" about "protecting performers" and all the firery rhetoric about "the pornographers", it all comes back to the same pile of bullshit that sex workers have had to endure for far too long. The essential argument of Measure B proponents can be reduced to this:Porn performers who don't dance to our tune are simply too stupid or too slutty to be able to fend for themselves as consenting adults, so we saviors of the State just have to act as their virtual parents and save them ourselves through condoms. Oh, and make us a shitload of money through packaging of condom sales and buying off whole government agincies, too...because what sells better than "safer sex"??

Again, people of Los Angeles County, please don't fall for this nonsense.

I'll leave you here with Michael Whiteacre's comment response to another attempt to distort the record.

That’s right – an old misanthrope in Georgia who can’t even spell “y’all” correctly (and who still contends that AIM made a $90 profit on a $110 / 120 test) has all the answers about the L.A. porn industry.

What the hillbilly Phony Libertarian does’t seem to grasp is that we Americans have certain inalienable rights and liberties by default. Those defending their rights against an attack need not convince anyone of anything. The legal BURDEN is on those trying to infringe upon those rights to establish the requisite state interest.

Every issue, every controversy of public consequence, is a balancing act in which the pro’s and con’s must be weighed. Competing interests must be balanced.

However Michael Weinstein is an authoritarian with an absolutely totalitarian worldview. To him there are no competing interests — you can hear it in his rhetoric: this is “simply” a matter of workplace safety, or public health, or whatever. He will not deign to consider any arguments about counterbalancing, and he brooks no dissent.

When it comes to people’s rights, to constitutionally protected liberties – he doesn’t wanna hear about it. The first amendment, and the liberties protected under Lawrence v. Texas, DO NOT MATTER to him — he doesn’t even think they’re part of the calculus. Weinstein is totally single-minded — as all authoritarians and fascist dictators are. He TELLS US what the problem is, and he prescribes the solution by decree.

And stooges like Mike South HAND THE WEINSTEINS OF THE WORLD THE ARGUMENT.

1) In order for the government to act, to restrict people’s CONSTITUTIONALLY GUARANTEED AND PROTECTED rights and liberties, the government must demonstrate a state interest.


2) The government ONLY has an interest in things it can PROVE.
It is essential to understand these two points.
AHF is attempting to use workplace safety laws as the means to attack the adult industry, and to infringe upon the rights of performers and producers, but AHF clearly lacks a clear understanding of how these rules work as a matter of law.
If a performer who its a sexually active person has contracted a common STI such chlamydia, gonorrhea, HPV or herpes, there is NO WAY to prove that it was contracted on set. These infections are comparable to the flu. Only rare infections, things such as the HIV virus, can be traced to a patient zero.
In the end, all that this new study shows is that, x number of performers sought testing / treatment over that 4-month period. The data does NOT show what IF ANY number of performers WORKED while infected, or contracted an STI while AT WORK. The authors ask voters to ASSUME that these infections may all be traced to workplace exposures — and the fact that AHF and the authors of this study have made the comparison to STI rates among Nevada brothel workers is also instructive.
Nevada brothel workers often live on the premises and, per the house rules, are prohibited from having sex outside the prostitute/client relationship. In this regard they represent a separate and distinct population from the surrounding general population, much like the incarcerated, or military personnel confined to a base.
Adult performers, by contrast, are not a population separate and distinct from the rest of the population. Performers are a SUBSET of the general population. LA County performers are members of the population of LA County. They interact with the rest of the population, as well as with each other, off set.
Regardless of one’s profession, NO test can demonstrate that a common infection was contracted by a sexually active adult at work. Correlation does not equal causation. If the government cannot prove that work was the cause, it lacks the requisite state interest to ban an entire type of work.

And remember, Clones...this isn't just for porn sets, either; it's for webcammers, homemade porn sites..even married couples making porn vids for their own pleasure. In other words, it's about EVERYONE.

I don't need to say it, but I'll say at anyway, Los Angeles County peeps...Vote NO on Measure B. Don't let these fascist lying bastards win.

The Concise Case Against Measure B In 73 Seconds (From Nina Hartley)

Over at the Performers For Choice website, there are nearly three pages of testimonial videos from performers who have spoken out against Measure B.

You may feel free to go there and view them all, because they are as worthy as the cause of defeating this proposal.

But, if you prefer the short and sweet version of why Measure B should be defeated, I think that this ad (mirrored here) by Nina Hartley should suffice quite well. I present it without further comment, since it pretty much says it all.

You know what to do on Tuesday, people of LA County.

In no way am I diminishing the other performers who have come out against Measure B....I'm simply emphasizing Nina because her testimony is powerful enough on its own.

A Daily Kos Diarist Comes Out Against Measure B: The Beginning Of A Pro-Porn Left Rebellion??

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

More Lying From The "Yes On Measure B" Crowd....And A Bit Of Slut-Shaming, Too (Or, We Are All Pornographers Now)

[This is a continuation of my last post on the scummy tactics of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and other proponents of Measure B, the proposed condoms-in-porn mandate. For background, read my previous post.]

The blog SmartVoter.org just posted at their site the full voter guide to the proposed Measure B ordinance up to vote in Los Angeles County, including all of the arguments and rebuttals by proponents and opponents. I've posted some of the statements previously, but here are, just for recording's sake, the statement in opposition to Measure B, as well as their rebuttal to the pro-B arguments.

First, their original argument (with signatories attached):

Measure B is a ridiculous waste of tax dollars.

It would throw hundreds of thousands of your tax dollars, every year, at an imaginary threat.
It would send government inspectors, at full salary and benefits, to adult film sets to ensure actors are not only wearing condoms but rubber gloves, goggles and lab coats. This is money we need for real public health threats.

Measure B's backers falsely claim a health threat in the adult film industry. Every single actor is tested at least monthly. In 8 years, not one has contracted HIV on a set anywhere in the U.S. In fact, by driving film productions underground where there is no testing and no industry regulations, actors would be less safe, not more. Moreover, the Department of Public Health warns that Measure B would expose the County to expensive lawsuits + wasting money needed for real public health risks.

While we are wasting tax dollars for no reason, we are also driving a vital source of jobs out of state. The adult film industry employs thousands of people out of L.A. County: not just actors, but lighting and sound engineers, caterers, craftspeople, etc. This is exactly what we do NOT need during this recession.

Measure B is a ridiculous waste of tax dollars, kills thousands of jobs, is unnecessary, and does nothing to protect public health.

Vote NO on Measure B.


STUART WALDMAN
President of VICA (Valley Industry and Commerce Assoc.)

DR. PETER MIAO
Infectious Disease Specialist

DIANE DUKE
CEO Free Speech Coalition

PAMELA J. BROWN, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics

RANDALL WEISSBUCH, MD
Physician

Of course, you will recognize Diane Duke of the Free Speech Coalition and Dr. Peter Miao of Cutting Edge Testing as part of the signatories.

And here's their rebuttal to pro-Measure B arguments:

Safe sex practices are a good idea. However, they shouldn't be forced on adult film actors. Our individual rights have been fading fast since the Patriot Act.

Do-gooders such as New York Mayor Bloomberg seek to create a nanny state where our behavior is increasingly regulated for our own good. Bloomberg decreed that people must buy soft drinks in small cups, because they could become obese if they bought larger sizes. Measure B declares that adult film actors would have to wear condoms during filming. This isn't much different than regulating the size of soda a person can buy. Do you like the idea of busybodies forcing people to do what is healthful for them? If not, vote NO.

Measure B would destroy the adult film industry in Los Angeles County, and it's quite a big industry here. Film producers tried using condoms during the HIV scare of the 1990s, and people refused to watch the movies. So will the producers just stop making these films? No. They will likely move to areas where they have the freedom to make the kinds of films they want to make, most likely to other counties or other states.

Measure B also creates an expensive government bureaucracy at the same time as budgets and services are being cut. Do we really want our tax dollars paying for government agents to go to movie sets and look at how sex acts are being performed? And would the film producers who get permits for their shoots now even bother in the future, if they are being faced with all these new regulations?

Whether you agree with the supporters of Measure B or not, it's a bad idea to impose their standards through force of law. They may regulate your business or your sex life the next time around. Vote NO on Measure B.


NANCY C. ZARDENETA
Chair, Libertarian Party of Los Angeles County

PAMELA J. BROWN, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics

RANDALL WEISSBUCH, M.D.
Physician

JOHN URIBE
Civil Liberties Attorney

TED BROWN
Small Business Owner

Note the reference there to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposal to ban the sale of large servings of soda pop, on the notion that such sales lead to obesity.  Never mind that all that would do is allow wealthier people to buy their soda in bulk to bypass the law, and that the enforcement would be selectively limited to poorer people, or that such a law would probably not reduce obesity nearly as much as, say, taxing soft drinks higher accross the board or even making healthier products more accessible to poorer folk.

Now, I may not personally agree with the libertarian slant of that argument, and would argue much more about how the proposed mandate would affect the right of the performer to choose for his/herself how to protect themselves.  But, I'm not an LA County citizen, nor am I getting paid for promoting the opposition.

But, that is a mere trivial beef of mine.  The response of the Measure B proponents, on the other hand, just isn't. Exhale and fine tune your BS sensory apparatuses before you go to the next paragraph.

Comparing drinking soda pop to the immediate risk of infection with a sexually transmitted disease on the job trivializes the threat facing porn performers. The current outbreak of syphilis in the porn industry is living proof that having sex in adult films without a condom is a clear and immediate threat to the health of these performers and our community.

It is widely accepted that when you are on the job you are afforded protection that you may or may not choose to exercise in your own home. If you wish to make home repairs without gloves or a hard hat that is your own business. When you get paid to perform a task, workplace health and safety rules apply. Porn is a legal industry. Performers are paid to perform and they are entitled to the same on the job protection that every other person enjoys.

Measure B makes clear that no public dollars will be spent to enforce condoms in porn. All of the costs will be carried by porn producers. Sex acts in your bedroom are a strictly private matter. When filming is done for money it is a public matter. Why should people or even animals that appear in Hollywood movies be protected and the young people who appear in porn be abused?

The fact that many porn producers break the law and film without permits is not a good reason to do nothing to protect any performers or our community from disease.

Vote Yes on B!

JEFFREY R. KLAUSNER, MD. MPH
Professor of Medicine, UCLA

RICHARD G. POLANCO
Senator Richard Polanco (Ret.)

PAULA TAVROW, Ph.D.
Director, UCLA Bixby Program on Population and Reproductive Health

MICHAEL WEINSTEIN
President, AIDS Healthcare Foundation

MARK ROY MCGRATH, MPH
Public Health Analyst, UCLA

Let us break this bit of hyperbolic bullshittery down, shall we??

1)  "Comparing drinking soda pop to the immediate risk of infection with a sexually transmitted disease on the job trivializes the threat facing porn performers."

Wait...you mean that only porn performers transmit sexually transmitted diseases and then spread them to the general population?? Just like only poor people gulping down Coke and Pepsi spread diabetes to the population at large?? Of course, Weinstein has no problem with the pandemic of obesity or diabetes (and the high content of soft drinks with high fructose corn syrup which does tend to lead to more sugar addiction than usual)...but why even go there in the first place??

And also....most studies show that the threat of STI's in porn is actually a bit less than the threat in the general population, mostly because the industry actually does test for most STI's, and because in general performers are actually more conscious of their private behavior and are willing to make proper safety procedures to protect themselves...and to properly treat themselves on the chance they do get infected. There are actually greater threats of STI transmissions from "down low" public street park encounters by closeted fundamentalists than there are from shooting porn...so why isn't the pro-B crowd going for mandating condoms in public parks or even churches??


2) The current outbreak of syphilis in the porn industry is living proof that having sex in adult films without a condom is a clear and immediate threat to the health of these performers and our community.

Actually, it's more like living proof that AHF and the condom mandate proponents are completely full of shit.

The original syphilis outbreak took place in Budapest, Hungary, last June/July, and at its peak claimed approximately 100 performers in Europe; but really didn't kick in so much in the US until Mr. Marcus revealed his story of contracting the infection in May, and attempting to cloak it away and alter his tests until he was revealed in September. Most of the infected performers have undergone the required treatment and are now back performing, and there have been no reports of infection since last month. Also, when it did cross over to the US, the most that could be found was that the LA County Department of Public Health had confirmed that they had 9 cases of performers whom had contracted syphilis and were being treated. Stangely enough, the Free Speech Coalition had confirmed only TWO infected performers (Mr. Marcus included), and they reported that the other confirmed case was from a condom-only gay performer.

There was a sizeable blowup within the industry about whether or not those who were not infected with syphilis would be forced to endure the penicillin antibiotic treatment, which does indeed pose some minor threats, or whether they would have to face a 60-90 day waiting period before testing using the popular RPR test. However, the FSC and their partners APHSS did discover an alternative test that required only a 14-day waiting period, and offered that as an alternative for those not wanting the antibiotic treatment.

But even with all that, surely Weinstein (or whomever penned that sentence out of their ass) probably are smart enough to Google that syphilis can be spread just as likely through sores in the mouth or face, and that condoms alone would not prevent the spread of that infection. In fact, how does he know that many of the infections in Europe weren't in shoots requiring condoms??

Oh. and there is also this inconvenient fact that syphilis has been able to thrive in the larger population of LA County without the need for porn performers...whether wrapped or not. To quote Michael Whiteacre in a comment to a post at AdultBizLaw.com:

Syphilis cases in California rose 18% from 2010 to 2011, according to new data released by the state Department of Public Health — the adult industry is not the cause of this rise, it is a victim of his massive failure of California’s public health institutions.

Of course, mandating condoms for everyone engaging in sex in real life, rather than just those performing in porn, wouldn't quite do the trick, wouldn't it??


3) It is widely accepted that when you are on the job you are afforded protection that you may or may not choose to exercise in your own home. If you wish to make home repairs without gloves or a hard hat that is your own business. When you get paid to perform a task, workplace health and safety rules apply. Porn is a legal industry. Performers are paid to perform and they are entitled to the same on the job protection that every other person enjoys.

That is one of the few unabashed truths in their "rebuttal"...and even that is twisted around beyond recognition. Of course, plumbers and home repair professionals do have strong workplace protections to deal with occupational hazards, and some of them have detailed procedures for especially hazardous work, such as asbestos-tainted material removal or other forms of hazardous waste. But, the regulations are closely related to and adjusted to the particular hazard they face, and they are crafted with the full input of the workers in mind.

Engaging in sex on screen is indeed performing, and while it is similar to the way that people engage in sex in their bedrooms in private, it is plenty different. When you engage in sex in private, you probably don't have a set of hot lights and a camera/film crew all up in your bra and panties, and a director yelling and screaming to change positions every 5 minutes so that they can get "the perfect shot"; or, if you happen to be the male talent, a director up your jock telling you to stay hard and keep your edge until HE says you can cut loose with your "money shot". No one is saying that there shouldn't be some sembulance of standards of safety when shooting a sex scene, or that there is no justification for health and safety standards.

The problem is, though, that porn, like any other form of creative art form, relies on putting out an enhancement fantasy of real sex...and most porn consumers/watchers have spoken loud and clear that they will NOT buy condomized sex. (Notice I said "most", not "all"; there may be a market for "safer sex" out there, but it is generally restricted.) Merely asserting an audience is out there or can be invented through government fiat simply doesn't make it so.

Besides that. Measure B gives no leeway to even homegrown cam sites or even private owners of home websites the option of not using condoms; it simply MANDATES that they be used: and if you want to even tape a sex scene in LA County, you have to buy a permit which requires you to wear "protection", or face invasive raids from the Condom Police, stiff fines, and even jail time. Plus, those permits won't be cheap, because....well, we'll get to that soon.


4) Measure B makes clear that no public dollars will be spent to enforce condoms in porn. All of the costs will be carried by porn producers. Sex acts in your bedroom are a strictly private matter. When filming is done for money it is a public matter. Why should people or even animals that appear in Hollywood movies be protected and the young people who appear in porn be abused?

 No public dollars??  You mean, the money exercised by the County of Los Angeles from forcing producers of porn to pay for permits, insurance, and the salaries of government officials to inspect them for condoms is not "public dollars"???  Riiiiight..and the excise tax on cigarettes and tobacco isn't public, either?? Well...at least Weinstein didn't call porn producers "pornographers" here...or was that just a slip up??

"When filming is done for money, it is a public matter." But if it is done for free and no condom is used -- or if a condom is used and summarily breaks -- and HIV or some other STI is spread, it's none of our business, right?? Only the "pornographers" and the porn performers should be coerced to become guniea pigs for "safer sex" as a means of "role modeling" the rest of the impressionable public, I guess.

And..."young people who appear in porn be abused.."?? Yeah, because we all know all dem stoopid sluts can't be trusted to think and decide to enter porn for themselves...they must be "sex trafficked" in by those cigar-chomping, trenchcoat-wearing dirty old men with the 70's mustaches who trick them with candy and dreams of Hollywood success if only they'd just lie on that casting couch!!

Paging Shelley Lubben, me thinks??

5) The fact that many porn producers break the law and film without permits is not a good reason to do nothing to protect any performers or our community from disease.

Remember that before the City of Los Angeles passed their version of the condom mandate earlier this year, the only requirement for a permit was that you pay a fee to FilmLA, the board that supervises movie filming in the city. There actually was no requirement for condoms or any other form of protection....until AHF invented them for both the LA city law and Measure B. Also, the LA city law is still subject to legal challenges, pending the outcome of the county ordinance.

And, as for Weinstein and the pro-Measure B's concern for "our community"??  Well that is shown quite starkly in their current billboard campaign, as you can plainly see:

Yep. 

Never mind that they have used and exploited the experiences of "pornographers" like Darren James, Derrick Burts, and Shelley Lubben to promote their ordinance.

Never mind that they actually have gained some support from actual "pornographers" such as Brittany Andrews and Katja Kassin, as well as luminaries in the porn world who have been outspoken critics of both AIM and the FSC (such as Mike South and Gene Ross).

(And oh, by the way...you probably don't want someone like Monica Foster on your side, either.)

And...never mind that everyone from Republicans and Libertarians to even staunch Democrats and liberals have spoken out against this proposal, and that medical experts of all -- and no -- political persuasion(s) have seen the hypocrisy and counterproductiveness of Measure B.

Nope..in their mind, either you are with them, or you're with "the pornographers".

I'll simply let Dr. Chauntelle Tibalis of Porn Valley Vantage get the final word on this, because she says it so well:

Really? The “pornographers” say? That’s the game you’re gonna play, AHF? Reeeeally?

Thank you, AIDS Healthcare Foundation for shaming “pornographers” in this way.

Thank you, AIDS Healthcare Foundation for using donor funds – monies that I’m sure were given to your “own self-created social enterprises” under the auspices of working to “rid the world of AIDS” (quotes from AHF mission statement here) –  to shame “pornographers” in this way.

Because I know that’s what you’re doing!! I know what you’re really saying with this ad is “Eww look at these evil nasty people who say ‘No on B’ – pornographers!! Ewwwwwww!! They’re too gross and awful to know anything about what they know, and you don’t want to be associated with Them, do you?”

How dare you?

How dare you, an organization that claims to want to help so many oft-shamed-throughout-history and continuously marginalized communities, how dare you behave in this manner?

How dare you rely on stereotype, myth, and urban-legend horrors born from decades of speculation and misinformation about “pornographers”? How dare you engage those cultural fictions in such a manipulative manner? How dare you pass judgement on working, tax-paying members of LA County (and the human community as a whole)? How dare you dole out shame-by-proxy to everyone even obliquely associated with porn? How dare you?!!

You know what they say: you can talk shit when you’re perfect (or something like that)… and I’m far from perfect… so guess what I’m doing right now, AHF? Shaming you!! But I’m not gonna pull out stereotypes and slurs to do it. I’m just gonna call attention to the fact that I know what you’re up to.

Shame on you.

In.  FUCKING.  Deed.

Please, citizens of LA County....don't fall for this bullshit.  VOTE NO ON MEASURE B.

Lies, Damn Lies, Goddess Damn Lies...And The Campaign For Measure B...Now Venturing Into "Rescue Mission" Territory?? (Part 1)

The Really Big Lie campaign by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation to pass Measure B -- the condom mandate in porn ordinance -- is now kicking into high gear, with the release of the sample ballots for the November 6th election to citizens of Los Angeles County. The sample ballot for Measure B, shall we say, is very revealing of the means to which proponents will resort to distortion and evasion, if not outright lie their asses off, in order to get their measure passed.

Steven St. Croix, whom has been one of the principled activists in opposition to Measure B, got his sample ballot last week, and ripped off a brilliant refutation and smackdown of the arguments used in favor of the measure. His breakdown is worthy of its own read; but there are some elements that deserve special attention. First, here's St. Croix's annotated version of the "Impartial Analysis" segment of the sample ballot:

First off...."impartial"???  From the same counsel that is promoting the ordinance?? Yeah, right.

Right off the bat, we see the first distortion (which St. Croix has annotated brilliantly): the notion that the full costs of enforcement of the ordinance will come exclusively from the forced permits imposed on the "pornographers" (more on that anon). This corresponds with the assertions of Michael Weinstein that no taxpayer money will be needed to enforce Measure B if it is passed, because it will all come out of the producers' hides with the permits forced on them. Problem is, those permits will have to fund the salaries and the activities of the investigators and "inspectors" who will be ensuring that porn shoots be wrapped up...and if it's going to be only fees from the permits funding the enforcement, then chances are that those fees will be through the roof..of the LA Coliseum.

Or: to quote directly the fact sheet from the anti-Measure B group Citizens Against Government Waste:

Film LA, Inc., the county film permitting agency, cites the cost of an average film permit as $625, but early estimates for Measure B permits by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health puts the costs as high as thousands of dollars per permit. The department estimates the initial startup costs to hire new inspectors, implement an inspection program and pay benefits at $300,000 with no idea of the program’s eventual costs.  Many production companies will either leave the county or simply go underground to avoid paying the fees, thereby necessitating the costs needed to develop an enforcement program to track down these productions.

And remember, Clones, that this measure would cover not just the big porn companies who shoot regularly in LA County, but could potentially affect anyone who does camshows or even runs her own website out of her private home. If you shoot any form of explicit sex, then you would be required to have the permit to shoot legally..and you would have to use condoms. Would you like to pay out your life's savings to AHF just to shoot a free condom commercial??

Of course, if no company bites on buying a permit and simply decides to either go rogue and risk fines and jail, or simply move their ops out of LA County, then the latter have a BIG problem of where to find the money to enforce the law. Which makes AHF's pledge not to attempt to issue a RTP for using their money and personnel to help enforce the mandate ring pretty hollow....especially since they have already commited to paying both LA County and the city of LA for all legal fees incured in defending the condom mandate law in court.

This other note of the "impartial analysis" struck me:

The Board of Supervisors reserves the right to amend in order to further the purposes of the measure.

So...does that mean that the LA County BoS can simply, at the first sign of AHF/CalOSHA bitching about not punishing the "pornographers" enough (or, if AHF needs to shake down more porn companies for money), alter the ordinance even further??  How...open ended of them.

But...that's the "impartial analysis". Far more fascinating and disturbing is the actual argument that AHF puts forth to promote Measure B. Again, I borrow from Stephen St. Croix's annotated reproduction.

Notice, if you will, among the signatories of this agitprop -- not including Mr. Weinstein, of course -- are some of the more schemier propagandists for enforcing condoms in porn. Mark McGrath, if you will remember, was the official who first came upon Derrick Burts after the latter soured on AIM, and who  basically presented his original "case" of getting infected in a gay male porn shoot to CalOSHA and the LA County Department of Public Health. Paula Tavrow is the UCLA professor whom has been the chief academic booster for the condom mandate, and whose department of Reproductive Health has been most responsible for those wonderful hearings where the likes of Shelley Lubben have been allowed free reign to bash about "Morals Clauses" and rampant HPV and HIV in porn and how young girls are being "forced" and "abused" by the "diseased" industry.

However, you may not know about the "Senator Retired" Richard Palanco. I'll just let Michael Whiteacre fill in those blanks for you (comment to this post over at Michael Fattorosi's AdultBizLaw.com blog):

As for Richard G. Polanco, in 1991, AHF opened the “Richard Polanco HIV Clinic” in Hollywood. He has authored or sponsored pro-AHF legislation throughout his political career.

Back in 2001, he was seen as the presumptive front-runner to succeed termed-out Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Hernandez, but he abruptly dropped out of the race under the shadow of scandal. 

”He plays dirty politics — the Katz race,“ says one political insider, alluding to Polanco’s sponsorship of a last-minute 1998 primary-campaign mailer slandering Assemblyman Richard Katz as anti-Latino on wholly fictional grounds. 

Polanco was heard on a tape recording saying, “I’ll spend whatever it takes to beat that Jew,” according to a source close to the Katz camp who knows Polanco and heard the tape. Roughly a week and a half after that comment was made, Polanco poured $186,000 into (now scandal-plagued) Richard Alarcon’s competing campaign, money which funded the infamous mailer.

”He’s slimy,“ says another insider, citing Polanco‘s role in hardball City Council contests in Lynwood and Commerce, involving the contracting of city-attorney posts to Polanco allies.

Polanco now has a lucrative career as a lobbyist. Earlier this year he, along with LA City Councilmembers Bill Rosendahl and Paul Koretz, spoke at AHF’s 25th anniversary ceremony.

That would be the same Bill Rosendahl and Paul Koretz who got paid with direct contributions from AHF, and who just so happen to be on the very committee who is now charged with enforcing LA's new condom mandate law. (Though, they have said that if the county-wide ordinance passes, they would alter the city law to reflect the tougher language of the county ordinance.)

But, here's where the fascination begins: Let's go to one paragraph of Weinstein's defense of AHF that speaks wonders:

It isn't fair to ask the general public to pick up the tab for irresponsibility of this industry. It isn't fair that people, and the community as a whole, are contracting infections, some of them life threatening and lifelong, in order to make a living. Pornographers should not be exempt from the basic safety rules that protect everyone else. Public health should not be sacrificed on the false claim that this is a free speech issue; this is a public health and safety issue.

Riiiiiight. Except that "pornographers" are NOT exempt from "basic safety rules that protect everyone else", since they are required to report any and all cases of infection of HIV and certain other STI's to the LACDPH. And, no one but Weinstein (and Lubben, and probably Gail Dines and other antiporn "feminists") would even have the gall to argue that STI's begin in the porn industry and then make their way to the general public, and that only condoms are the solution to contain, if not roll back, the pandemic of STI's and HIV.

After all, we don't fight against influenza, which can potentially kill far more people than HIV/AIDS ever has in real life, by mandating that all food workers wear rubber aprons, goggles, face masks, and face shields, or that anyone suffering from the common cold be forced to work with "barrier protection"..or even be forced to gulp down loads of Dayquil or Advil. And, I don't see any cries for forcing NFL players to wear ankle or knee braces to protect themselves from career-killing knee injuries, or legislation forcing said players to wear neck braces to prevent against concussions.

And BTW, Mr. Weinstein, if porn performers are to become "employees" as part of your plan to impose condoms as a condition of employment, that would mean that they would potentially become eligible for workers' comp and medical benefits....meaning that the California taxpayer actually WOULD ultimately pick up at least a bit of the tab for their activities...especially if they become infected anyway with HIV because they had no idea that their screen partner was infected because you did away with the testing regime that protected them, and then the condom by some chance broke.

In addition..the old "public safety trumps freedom of speech" card is an old tried and true canard that has been used by authoritarians everywhere since the Age of Ever to suppress and beat down those who challenge their attempts to impose their fascist rule on others. Including, I might add, gay men. When you channel the likes of Jerry Falwell and Bryan Fischer to promote your initiatives, you can't call yourself "progressive".

Oh, but that's just the appetizer...here's the paragraph that precedes that last one:

Porn producers claim that requiring condoms will be a financial hardship on their industry. However, the lifetime cost of treating an HIV infection is more than $567,000. Since these performers are not provided health insurance by porn producers, this cost is most likely to be borne by taxpayers of Los Angeles County, as health care provider of last resort. The taxpayers are subsidizing the porn business. On the other hand, 100% of all costs of the permits and inspections required by this initiative are covered by the pornographers.

No, Mr. Weinstein...requiring condoms is not the financial hardship here. Having the county force a condom mandate that would require them to produce video content that has been thoroughly rejected by the consuming public time and time again, and forcing them to pay what amounts to shakedown money to AHF for free condom placement ads, and turning performers into guniea pigs for "safer sex" at the expense of their creative autonomy and their ability to make a living?? THAT would be the hardship.

And, that $567K figure for a lifetime of treatment for HIV?? (Which Weinstein really isn't complaining about in the first place, since most of that is money in his pocket and more scare tactics and fear he can use to shame people into submission.) Using the true stats about how many straight performers (4 in the 2004 outbreak, NONE since then) have actually been infected from HIV from porn shoots, that figure would amout to a whopping.....<gasp>....$2,448,000 of taxpayer expense. In 2004. (And, in the years following to the present time. That's a whopping $306,000 per person.

Not cheap, buuuuuttttttt...

By contrast, in 2004 ALONE, according to stats from the California Dept. of Public Health, during the period from January 2004 to January 2005 there were 4,646 confirmed cases of HIV in LA County...which, if multiplied by the supposed average cost of treating one single HIV infected person quoted by Weinstein, would come out to...$2.63+ BILLION!! In Los Angeles County ALONE. For people infected with HIV IN A SINGLE YEAR....ALONE.

Yeah, that's some bit of subsidy....for AHF. For the porn industry, which has not seen even ONE single HIV infection since Darren James/Lara Roxx et. al.?? Meh. Not so much.

(BTW..I got the numbers for confirmed HIV cases by surfing the CA Dept. of Public Health statistics and subtracting the cumulative numbers of confirmed HIV infections  in LA County for the period ending January 2004 (chart here-pdf) from the cumulative numbers from January 2005 (chart here). Unlike Weinstein, I back up my numbers.)

BTW, as well...please note that I am NOT making any case against having public funding of treatment of HIV-infected people; in fact, as a single payer radical, I find it to be the moral and right thing to do. But, to use public funding of HIV treatment as a cash cow for your organization and oppose so rabidly vaccines and other alternatives of HIV/AIDS treatment, while simultaneously clucking about how "the pornographers" are using the taxpayers' dime to infect the society at large.....that is what you call real hubris. Or...just plain gall.

There is more to the Lies of the Measure B proponents, though...and that will be for my next post.

Vote NO on Measure B!!

Kayden Kross. BADASS. Fine ASS. SmartASS. (Literally.) And, All Up In Measure B's Grillz.

Today, there was an Internet social media protest action launched by former performer/current producer Stephen St. Croix, in which numerous performers, producers, and fans formed a flash mob to promote two YouTube videos he had created as part of the campaign against Measure B, the Los Angeles County proposed initative to mandate condoms for porn shoots there. Unfortunately, due to prior work commitments, BPPA wasn't able to actively participate in this action....but we wholeheartedly in spirit and in solidarity support St. Croix's efforts to inform the public on the dangers and misdirections of Measure  B. For those of you wanting to see the two video ads, here they are:

Original vids can be found here and here. 

But...if that isn't enough to convince you of the demerits of Measure B, then perhaps a testimonial from an active porn performer will do??

May I then present the powerful testimony of Kayden Kross, which was posted today to XBiz through her insider blog, The Dish. I will simply repost it in its entirity and let you read for yourself, because it says what needs to be said.

— but about Measure B

If you’re reading this you should care. If you’re reading this you should care because I am a pornstar and you are reading one of my blog pages. You’ve probably whacked it to me. If this is not the case, please change that. I’ll wait.

And I’ll assume from here forward that anyone reading has whacked it to my porn, or at least taken a quick glimpse, and not whacked it. If the non-whacking is my fault, I apologize. Beside the point though, the whacking. Please notice — in a quick mental shuffle through the Rolodex of my porn — the conspicuous absence of condoms in my scenes. They are not there. I did condom scenes in my first movie, and that turned out to suck major monkey balls. The added friction the condoms caused over the course of the shoot was ridiculous. The condoms were not a birth control measure. They were, theoretically, an STD protection. But all the performers were tested. So in my first movie I was protected from STDs that my coworkers didn’t have.

In the next movie I opted out of condoms, and have ever since. Six years I’ve been doing this with a perfect testing record. The system has worked for me.

And in that time, yes, performers have caught gonorrhea. They have caught chlamydia. When this has happened they have taken antibiotics and a week off and then returned to work, good as new. They have not caught HIV. Not a single case of HIV has been transmitted on one of our porn sets in the entire time I’ve been in this industry, and some years before that. Not one fucking case.

And yes, people in the industry have caught HIV off set, in the wild. They have been flagged by the testing procedures and removed from the pool of performers available to work. But they have not transmitted it on a porn set to other performers.

And, yes. There is the recent bad business of this syphilis scare. One of our own faked his test and continued working knowing he had it. That’s shitty. We bungled that one bad. Shitty shitty shitty. Two people caught syphilis this way. With all the bungling. They had to take antibiotics.

And the industry reformed its testing measures to better control against this happening in the future.

In the wild, on average, there are around 2,150 new cases of HIV reported in Los Angeles County each year. This is possibly because there are a lot of people having sex with a lot of other people without verifying one another’s STD status. We are not those people. We’re verified. We are card-carrying motherfuckers.

And who wants to see condoms in porn anyway? Porn is fantasy. It is fantastical with fantastically crazy situations wherein incredibly unlikely women with incredibly unlikely breasts suddenly fall to their knees over men who have their own incredibly unlikely anatomy at the slightest provocation. Never mind the lack of realism behind the perfect shaves and the matching lingerie these women all sport, bent over as they are, waggling their asses with spontaneity. Surely this really happens. Surely women just go around like that, clean-shaven and in designer lingerie, with designer breasts, twenty-four-fucking-seven, horny out of their minds. We beg you to suspend your disbelief in porn. We practically grovel for it. We push limits that would make even a puppet show retch — everything from the dialogue to the story holes to the errors in continuity that are just positively and irreverently savage. But… Measure B would have us get all real-world on your ass and strap a condom on the unlikely dicks and remind everybody sitting at home that fantasy time isn’t very fantastical at all because in the real world there is heartache and death and disease and — god forbid — pregnancy?

Fuck that.

Porn is legal because it is protected under free speech. Free speech protects expression. Measure B wants to force us to amend our free expression to include their message about safe sex.

You know about safe sex, right? Because you’re not twelve? Well just in case, here’s the long and short of it:

Sex is the biological function of procreation. As such, procreation sometimes happens. Condoms will help prevent that, as will birth control pills, spermicide, tube tying, and more extreme measures.

STDs are those diseases that are primarily transmitted via sex, although they are not limited to sexual transmission. The nature of communicable disease by definition requires it to be shared between organisms. It must be communicated — by blood or by semen, by air, by skin-to-skin contact, by snot or by spit or by tears — by something. So yeah, sex will bring a person in contact with a lot of these things. All of them, if you’re an avid deepthroater. Sex is messy and in your face. It’s arguably the only acceptable way to interact with two ends of a digestive system that isn’t your own without a medical license. But yeah, condoms will prevent some communicable diseases with 85% accuracy if you use them exactly right. Having sex with people who have been medically verified as not infected with sexually communicable diseases will also prevent this. So will abstinence. Your best bet, though, is agoraphobia.

So now you know that condoms are an option in safe sex. You are a responsible adult. You will make your choices from here.

But we are not responsible adults, obviously. Because Measure B would like to make the choice for us.

Consider this: Do you remember High School Biology? Remember the concept of Spontaneous Generation and how Louis Pasteur disproved it with the squiggly-necked flask that microbes couldn’t get through? Maybe I’m the only one who remembers this because back then I liked textbooks instead of people. But anyway he proved that things don’t spontaneously generate. They don’t just arise out of thin air. And remember that paragraph I wrote a couple of paragraphs ago? I talked about how diseases must be communicated. And remember that other paragraph, up higher, where I talked about how all performers are tested? We are tested every fifteen days now. It used to be every thirty. And I hate needles. The point is that diseases don’t arise within porn. They are brought into porn by contact with partners on the outside.

And yet porn is treated like disease starts with us and we bring it to you people.
No. Disease ends with us. Maybe we’re doing the local population a small favor. Because we, for the most part, have an open and honest line of communication about STDs. STDs don’t carry the stigma for us that the general population associates with them. We talk about it. We’re on the frontlines and it is in our economic interest to stay disease free, not to mention we’re vain about our genitalia. Most STDs are silent. That means that for the most part people don’t know they have gonorrhea or chlamydia. HIV takes a while to manifest. Stage 1 syphilis is a single painless bump. The general population only knows there is something up if there are symptoms, and even then, they don’t always do anything about it. They definitely don’t go stick a godforsaken needle in their arm every fifteen days even though needles give them that scary-sinky feeling they get on the rides at Six Flags that drop too fast. Or again, maybe that’s just me. But anyhoo, in the general population, STDs travel silently. We porn performers are the variables that light them up. If one of us contracts an STD from one of you we catch it fast and we fix it fast and most of us then go back to you (not you-you, but the hypothetical sexual diseased person I am creating for this example. You know what I mean) and you, the hypothetical carrier, are alerted and told to fix it and then you, the hypothetical carrier, stop spreading it. See what just happened there? We are the end of the line.

Imagine if that one of our number who faked his test had just gone on in the real world instead. Not only would he have never tested, but it would have spread on silently, and those people who he spread it to would have spread it, and on and on, and then eventually someone would have had the sense to go to a doctor once Stage 2 flared up on his balls like one of Moses’ plagues. But that person who went to the doctor would have been so far removed from the original source, the incubation period being what it is, and the stigma being what it is, that the person would probably would have treated it silently and gone on with life, and the others would hopefully have done the same at some point, but not before infecting more people, or maybe they would never have treated it and just gone blind and insane. That is an option. Also known as Stage 3.

You’re probably reading this at work, right? If you’re paid hourly this math will be easier, but if you’re not, break it down. How many hours of your day today will be taken from you in the form of the cash you traded them for by the government. I mean taxes, of course. And then the government, being what it is, will reallocate your money, which is a tangible manifestation of your hours of your life that you traded doing what hopefully you love, but very likely don’t love. Some of the reallocation will be nice. Roads and schools and people not holding you up with machetes and taking your lunch money on the way home from work. These are good things. But some things… some things are not good things. Some things get your money by running a propaganda-driven campaign that the government buys into and then funds (with your money).

Like what is happening with AHF (AIDS Healthcare Foundation). AHF is the force behind Measure B. They are a non-profit foundation that possibly doesn’t profit because profits are diverted to Michael Weinstein in the form of a really ridiculous salary, plus perks. A salary to the tune of $366,096.00 as reported on his 2010 income taxes, to be exact (plus additional compensation that is hard to get a figure on). AHF will benefit greatly if this Measure passes. It is in their best interest. If it were in the interest of the performers it seeks to regulate, the performers would be the ones getting behind it.

And because a lot of performers are not behind it, Measure B has decided that it will cost California $300,000 (which is, to the budget’s credit, less than Michael Weinstein’s salary) annually to enforce it. That’s California, just to be clear. You know, the broke state. The one that already needs more dollars from you as it is. So under Measure B, they’d need to find dollars to send officers to porn sets to babysit, to watch hard dicks, specifically, to make sure, the whole time, that there is a latex barrier between the one willing adult participant and the other. Someone will be paid with your money to do this.

And also, because it’s a capitalist system, as in a free market system, a lot of porn will simply cease to be produced in California under Measure B. Because the market for porn with condoms is almost no market at all. So these businesses will likely move or close down. Either way, they stop paying taxes in California. You know, that broke state. There is talk of Nevada, some other states. I thought about what I would do in Nevada. Gambling bores me and I’m asocial. Nightclubs scare me. Magicians aren’t magical. I cannot live there. I thought about it, and I thought, No, that would suck. No offense, Nevada.

And there are people like me who agree with the Nevada thing. Where do their jobs go? Those people like me are people like you. They have families. Some have kids. They’re rooted in the cities they live in. They’re not all performers. They’re caterers and lighting crews and audio technicians and editors and PAs and producers and make-up artists and directors and agents and copywriters and receptionists and on and on. That’s a lot of fucking people with a lot of fucking jobs in this state in an industry where job security is precarious as it is. Piracy. Remember that? There was a worldwide recession, you may have noticed.

But if none of this appeals to your logos or your ethos, let me appeal to your pathos. Imagine yourself whacking it. Obviously I’d like to insert a case here re: why you should whack it to my porn but you can whack it to anything, almost. It is your imagination. So you’re whacking it, see. Maybe it’s the only free five minutes you get out of this day, because your kids are screaming and they need things and your wife needs things and your boss needs things and there is always traffic and emails piled up and taxes due and smaller bills and the dog needs a check up or maybe you do or maybe your grandmother does and the news is scary and you have dry cleaning to pick up, things to mail, a million petty endless errands and maybe today you’ll get them all done but tomorrow you’re going to wake up and start it all over again, and its been going like this for years, this adult life, and you have five fucking minutes to yourself. And you just want to whack it. So you’re tucked away in the bathroom stall or behind the closed door of your office or maybe you’re in your car parked behind an alley — you’re anywhere — and you have five minutes to whack it before the real world sinks its real world teeth in and pulls you back. And you start scrolling through the available porn and everything is condoms, fucking condoms everywhere with their hospital smell and their real world reminders and the funny bunching they do. You dig deeper. You’re looking for a scene with your favorite chick, or not — doesn’t have to be a chick and doesn’t have to be your favorite, it’s your call — so you’re looking for one scene you can really enjoy in your five fucking minutes of reprieve. But you don’t find it. Your five little minutes of pure selfish happiness, your you time, is slightly diminished by this. Imagine that. The real world creeping in on that last bit of sacred space.

Vote No on Measure B. 

— This message brought to you by a girl who would like to maintain autonomy over her vagina. 

The 25-year-old, Sacramento native is among the most sought-after actresses in adult today. The winner of the 2011 XBIZ Award for Acting Performance of the Year for her role in "Body Heat" is currently exclusive with Digital Playground and has been making adult movies since 2006. She is the only starlet in porn to have had exclusive contracts with Vivid Entertainment, Adam & Eve Pictures and now Digital Playground.

An itenerary of posts opposed to Measure B can be found over at Julie Meadows/Lydia Lee's blog here. Also, check out Steven St. Croix's powerful personal testimonial against Measure B here.