Porn Panic 2014: The Cali Senate Labor Committee Hearing on #AB1576 -- Part Deux (Now With 50% MORE AHF BS!!)

OK..we continue now with my review of last Wednesday's hearing on Isadore Hall's condom mandate/testing/documentation bill, AB 1576, before the California State Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee. If you want to re-read Part 1 of this essay for background, feel free by all means.

When we last left, the opposition of this joint effort of Izzy Hall and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation had just exited the microphone, but not without doing significant damage to the case for mandatory condoms in porn and weakened testing and forced documentation to the state. In particular, performer Lorelei Lee was especially devastating whole planks of AHF's illogic for justifying shoving condoms and dental dams and PPE down and up perfomers' orfices. Quoting again Mark Kernes' review of the hearing from AVN:

When it became Lee's turn at the rostrum, she noted that she was delivering to the committee "a petition of over 600 performers who have signed to say they have grave concerns with this bill and they strongly oppose it.

"I also have reached out to and spoken with over 100 performers myself, who have expressed their concerns to me," she added. "There can be no doubt that the majority of performers oppose this bill.

"The author of this bill does not speak for performers," she charged. "The sponsors of this bill do not speak for performers. They have not sat down with us. They have dismissed our attempts to give input, and the result is a bill that is shortsighted, that disregards any of our actual labor concerns, and that would mandate testing protocols that are in fact less strict and less rigorous than the ones we now have in place."

Lee also addressed the health privacy concerns: "In addition to jeopardizing our safety, this bill would force us to consent to the sharing of our medical information with the state. Mr. Hall has amended the bill so we no longer share that information with our employers, we share it with the state. This is a dangerous precedent to set, and I do not believe they would ask this of workers in any other industry."

Also there to deflate the AHF balloon of myopia was FSC Chairwoman Diane Duke, who offered a sterling defense of the current PASS screening/testing system, as well as the caveat that the entire exercise would potentially be in vain due to constitutional issues with both the condom mandate and the documentation requirements.

When it became Diane Duke's turn to speak, she emphasized that there had been no on-set HIV transmissions in the adult industry in ten years.

"The speakers who spoke earlier today contracted HIV in their private lives," Duke stated. "We have strict protocols, as Lorelei has mentioned, in the industry already. That has resulted in no on-set transmission of HIV, and that's nationwide we're talking about. Just to put that in perspective, in LA County alone, daily, five cases, new cases of HIV occur every single day. So in LA County, just five a day. Nationwide, none on set in 10 years."
Duke also warned that there is currently a lawsuit in Los Angeles County regarding Measure B, which is "a very similar bill [a law, actually], not as onerous as this bill"—and that portions of it had already been found unconstitutional in federal court.

"The enforcement provision of that has been found unconstitutional," she noted. "The narrow issue of condoms has gone on appeal. The oral arguments were in March, so we're expecting a decision handed down by the end of the year. So this bill may be pushed through and may be found unconstitutional before it is even able to make it to law, so I really urge everyone not to create a law that may be found unconstitutional."

That last paragraph was in relation to the ruling by federal district judge Michael Pregreson which upheld most of the provisions of Measure B, the condom mandate ordinance passed in 2012 by voters  in Los Angeles County, while striking down provisions dealing with enforcement and collection of fees from porn production companies and due process procedures. That ruling is currently under appeal in the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals, both on the constitutional grounds that the mandate violates First Amendment rights of free expression by imposing a content-based restriction on legal speech, and on the ground that AHF has no legal standing to defend the law because they are a third party not bound to enforce the ruling.

After that, there were brief statements of testimony from other opponents, raging from performers Jizz Lee, Amber Chase, Veruca James, and Chanel Preston of APAC; to reps from the St. James Infirmary in San Francisco, to reps from the porn syndicate MindGeek, among others.

Then, the Q&A from the committee members got going....and it turned out to be eye opening. First...

It was then the committee members' turn to ask questions, and Sen. Holly Mitchell, who voiced support for the bill, asked if passage of the bill would affect any plans that CalOSHA has to revamp its health code to include regulation of the adult industry. AHF's Martin said it wouldn't affect it at all, and noted that it was AHF which had brought the lack of condom use in the adult industry to CalOSHA's attention in the first place. Martin also noted, in response to one of Sen. Mitchell's questions, that "You all just approved a restoration of 26 employment slots at CalOSHA for investigation purposes, because one of the problems during the recession is that they cut and cut and cut, and were not able to enforce the law as vigorously as they would like. That will now change now that you've been able to restore that money for them," referring to a budget bill.

Of course, that was no surprise, considering that CalOSHA had been colluding with AHF from the get-go on attempting to rationalize the condom mandate, and that one of the big issues that afflicted Measure B was that the funds for enforcement would come directly out of the permit fees imposed on the "pornographers". That issue wouldn't exist with 1576 because the enforcement would be entirely on CalOSHA's dime, with money probably appropriated to them from general revenue. (Though, I'm sure that AHF will be more than willing to chip in with all that grant money they get from the state as well.)

In addition, that "revamp" of the health code to bring adult porn producers into compliance (and ultimately, be enforced nationwide through the Federal branch of OSHA) would effectively impose not only condoms and "barrier protection", but also effectively outlaw nearly every bit of current porn fashion in the name of "STI protection". No anal or vaginal penetration AT ALL unwrapped. No facials. No spooge shots in the vicinity of the butthole or vagina, or anywhere from the neck up or between the belly and the knee. No double anals or double vaginals, and possibly even no "double penetrations" (ass and pussy simultaneously) or "airtight" scenes (mouth, ass, and pussy simultaneously). No ass-to-mouth scenes, either. There was thought of allowing unwrapped oral sex scenes, provided that the perfomers therein subject themselves to doctor's approval and a regimen of Hepatitis C/HPV vaccinations prior to clearance, but that has not so far made it into the draft proposed regs. Effectively, the only allowed acts of "closure" would be internal ejaculation into a condom anywhere, or "nutting off" on approved parts of the body.

Next up, this highly illuminating response by AHF legal counsel Rand Martin to an inquiry by Sen. Mark Leno on the potential constitutional issues. Naturally, Martin simply blew that off in a whiff.

Sen. Mark Leno, who gave an impassioned statement at the end of the hearing about why he opposed the bill, asked Martin to comment on the constitutional issues raised by the Vivid lawsuit against Measure B, but Martin downplayed the possible effects of a ruling in that case.

"The issue of First Amendment protections under Measure B is now before the Ninth Circuit, and we have no idea when it will be decided," Martin said. "So we acknowledge that this is not done in terms of the court's ruling. However we don't believe that the issue of First Amendment is ultimately going to prevail. We appreciate the trial court's decision in that regard and [it] echoed our concerns. I would also point out that ultimately, again, this bill is about documentation and not about the underlying condom requirement, so I suppose in one scenario, that in the future, the court could throw out the condom requirement, that could ultimately have an impact on the regulation of it, which is what this bill is, is about the regulation of that requirement. Obviously, it would not be enforced at that point. However, we don't want to hold off on moving forward with this important documentation requirement on the off-chance that a court, a higher court will ultimately decide that there are certain First Amendment protections that are not being afforded under Measure B, and Measure B, of course, is what's being enforced."

Of course, the documentation requirements have their own constitutional issues, including that federal law called HIPPA, on top of the free expression/content-based speech restriction issues. But, if this bill is not about mandating condoms, why is AHF, who has built their organization squarely on the condom mandate for the past 5 years, so readily backing it?? It's not as if they even have their own brand of condoms to pitch to people for the goal of making lots of money off condom ads....errrrrr, spreading the word about "safer sex", right??

Then there is that little thing about the "FIVE!!! KNOWN!!! HIV!!! INFECTIONS!!! IN!!! PORN!!!!1111ONEHUNDREDELEVEN111!!!!" meme that turned out not to be so accurate...so much so that the Sacramento Business Journal had to print a retraction from the LA County DPH rebuking Hall's claim. When Leno inquired Martin about that bit, the response by the latter was classic....in blowing the roof off the entire Bullshit Mountain built around the condom mandate.

What was of particular interest was Martin's response when Leno brought up the fact that after the last Assembly hearing on the bill, the Sacramento Business Journal was required to print a retraction of its previous statement that there had been some HIV transmission within the industry on film sets.

"There has been a misunderstanding," Martin said, "and I'm sure we—and the opposition is just as guilty about perpetuating this: The bottom line is, because of California HIV privacy laws, it is impossible without a county public health investigation to actually determine where a transmission occurred. We have tried to be very careful to not say that HIV transmission occurred; we have said that HIV cases have happened within the adult performer community in a very short period of time last year, but we have not said that they happened on the set. The opposition has said, and they said it today, that it did not happen on set. They don't know any better than we do whether it happened on set or not. The bottom line is, because it could happen, and we believe that it has, that doesn't mean it's right or it's accurate, but we believe it has, it's important to make sure that protection is available."

As previously noted, the industry does indeed know, because of its testing procedures, that transmission did not occur on set, and AHF has previously at least strongly implied that it had, and one might suspect that Martin's backpedaling here might have something to do with Peter Acworth's recent threat of bringing a cease-and-desist order against AHF for strongly implying that on-set transmissions did occur.

In the faraway magical Bullshit Mountain occupied and ran by AHF and Izzy Hall, facts that deviate from the party faith simply flow off their backs like....you know...crap through geese. "We don't know if it occured or not, and they don't really know either, but we BELIEVE people are DYING of AIDS because of them slutty pornsters not wrapping up with OUR brand of condoms, and Goddessdammit, we need to DO SOMETHING NOW before our gravy train runs out....ahhhh, I mean...before another performer gets infected and DIES!!!!!!" Also, I'd say that Cameron Bay's  and Rod Daily's (and Derrick Burts') paychecks from AHF are essentially cashed with the assertion that the idea that HIV was indeed spread on that Kink.com set is more than just a "strong implication"....whatever the actual evidential facts may be.

The discussion then turned to the porn performer surveys cited by Izzy Hall and AHF at the beginning to justify the condom mandate: the 2010 survey done by UCLA and CalOSHA, and the more recent 2013 survey done by UCLA, which were both used by AHF to allege that porn performers were up to their asses in STI's. The 2010 study had already been dissected and debunked by Lawrence Mayer (his pdf here); the later study has been effectively woodsheded both by Mark Kernes and this blog right heya. When Mark Leno attempted to call out these surveys for their lack of correlation and causation, this merriment ensued:

Martin, however, went on to tout two studies of STDs in the adult industry, one which was published in 2012 (and debunked here) and the other done just one year ago, which AHF touted at a press conference just two weeks ago, and which was much discussed on AVN.com. However, when Leno asked the proponents to respond as to whether those studies indicated correlation or causation, Martin asked Dr. Paula Tavrow of UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health to speak to it—and she dodged the question.

"Two studies were conducted," she said. "One in 2012 was conducted over—in a single clinic over a five-month period that ended I think in August, 2010, and in that study, we found that there was a 28 percent prevalence of chlamydia or gonorrhea among adult film workers, and then there was a second study that was just completed a year ago, in June, 2013, of two clinics and that found that the rate just of gonorrhea and chlamydia was 28 percent among that community of adult film workers."

Actually, for the record, the first study, authored by Dr. Robert Kim-Farley and Dr. Peter Kerndt (he being the one who gleefully backed the condom mandate as a means of forced mentoring of the public on "safer sex"), only quotes "up to one fourth" of porn performers as having contracted either gonorrhea or chlamydia, and then later rounds off those quotes to "between 15 and 25 percent". Not quite 28 percent there.  And, for those of you who missed that blockbusting infographic that AHF blew out when they released the findings of the second "survey", their percentage of performers stricken with either gonorrhea of chlamydia came out to 23.7 percent, rounded up to 24%...off again by four percentage points.

But who cares about such namby-pamby things about facts and controls when there's DEADLY VIRUSES floating around???

But when Leno reiterated that his question was whether the studies showed that adult film performing caused the infections, or simply that they found infections but could not state a cause, Tavrow admitted, "None of these studies can determine how someone acquired a disease," but later added, "The fact that, as Senator Hall was just mentioning, that it's ten times higher among the performers than it is among a comparable LA County population of 20 to 29 year olds does suggest to us that it was due to their work."

Yeah, that's right. Ten times higher. As compared to what control group that you call "comparable"? The ones that test as often as porn performers? You know, like the prison population, where condoms are few and far between? How many "civilians" don't even know they have STI's until they go to a clinic and test themselves when they become sick? Oh..and what about the rate of STI infection inflated by the high impact of HIV/STI's on the gay male community and the gay male porn industry, where condoms are far more the rule than testing, and seromatching is done to attempt to prevent cross-infection...and gay performers and civilians still succumb to the virus every year?? Are you saying, Ms. Tavrow, that only porn performers, not the public at large, engage in "high-risk" sexual acts that leave them more vulnerable to infections? What about other factors like sharing dirty needles during drug use or non-wrapped anal sex leading to tearing and bleeding, which opens up the real risk of blood-to-blood transmission of STI's?

Both Lorelei Lee and Diane Duke were ready for that nonsense, though.

This "suggestion" was refuted soundly by Lorelei Lee, who stated, "The UCLA studies that were mentioned, one factor in those studies is that they were looking at performers who went to West Oak Urgent Care clinic. This is not a testing facility; this is someplace where performers go when they know they have an STI, so if you were to test performers from that clinic, you would get a 100 percent result of performers who have an STI. I have seen what's been published of the study. I have not seen any peer review of the study. I also have not seen it compared to a comparable population. I do not believe that that has happened. I do not believe that there is a comparable population who tests as often as we do, for example."

"I need to point out it is not a published study," Duke added. "It has not been published. There is a poster out about the results, and it was presented at a conference, but it is not a published study. They used two facilities. One was a test facility that was a PASS testing facility; the other was a treatment facility, so it would be like, as Lorelei said, like going to an oncologist's office and saying everybody's got cancer. When you go to a treatment facility, you're going to be surveying people who are being treated, so that's why that is problematic."

The fact that even with all those cooked-up facts, created out of the the thin whiff of raw sewage, they still could find only 25% of adult performers in LA County suffering from either chlamydia or gonnorhea, speaks well about the discipline of the overwhelming majority of adult performers in playing safely, and the effectiveness of the screening system in place. The fact that even with 5 confirmed HIV infections within the last 3 years in the "straight" porn community, none of them have been found to have been caused by on-set action, and -- most importantly -- no other performers have been found to have been infected as a result of any of these acts -- speaks even louder about the effectiveness of the PASS system (and even the system ultimately refined by AIM before AHF targeted them for destruction as part of the condom mandate crusade. (And I won't even mention the inconvenient fact that two of those infections came from gay male condom-only sets. Oh, wait...I just did!!)

Diane Duke also addressed yet another of Izzy Hall's wack memes: the alleged failure of industry moratoriums to prevent the spread of diseases.

Duke also described how moratoriums work in the adult industry, pointing out that they're not done casually, but upon doctors' recommendations. She also seemed to take umbrage with Hall's earlier statement that, "While these moratoriums sound good to the press, they were unenforced and largely ignored by the industry."

Now, during the syphilis scare and dual moratoria of 2013, there were some real grumblings from porn agents and some models/performers about why they had to suffer the loss of income while waiting for nearly a month without pay; and there was one attempt by a porn production company -- namely, Dan Leal's Immoral Productions -- to break the second moratorium and shoot product (with condoms, of course) which ultimately blew up in Leal's grill after performers blasted him back. Also, remember the controversy during the syphilis scare from some performers (Lisa Ann leading the opposition) to being forced to take a syphilis vaccine when not afflicted due to medical complications and the lack of an effective testing regimen for syphilis back then? In any case, the fact that everyone was ultimately cleared confirmed that the moratoriums did do their jobs, though not without some economic pain to those having to pay bills in the internim.

If AHF had their way, of course, there would be no need for moratoria to begin with, because condoms would save both the world and the industry from all those bad STI's, allowing everyone, even those with full blown HIV, chlamydia, gonorrhea, or even HPV, to gambol around and fuck freely. Either that, or softcore simulated porn would come in and save the day....I guess.

As to the other meme that "Condoms are already the LAW, HO-MAAAAYYY!!!" ...

Leno also asked the bill's opponents to comment on whether condoms were actually already required in adult film work?

"Regulation 5193 does not contain the word 'condom'," attorney Karen Tynan noted. "We have trial dates set on this issue on July 9, 10, 15 and 22-24 for two different companies, where ALJs [administrative law judges] employed by the state will be making determinations about the exposure control plan, but it's important to remember that that regulation, which was written in 1994 for healthcare industries, created exposure control plans that require testing that meets the standard of 5193, which says you either eliminate or minimize the hazard. We believe we eliminate or minimize the hazard with that exposure control plan through the testing."

 It should be noted that AHF has already won one case where they insist that condoms are the only true means of protection: the Treasure Island Media ruling where an ALJ upheld an earlier ruling (yet reduced the fine by two-thirds); that ruling is currently under appeal.

All of this was rendered a moot point, when both Senators Mitchell and Committee Chair Ben Huesco both declared in favor of the bill's passage, both citing the need for protection. Mitchell, though, did gently rap AHF for not addressing the plight of HIV+ Black women, whom she called "the hidden face of HIV". Considering that there is no AHF clinic in Izzy Hall's district in Compton, in spite of nearly five new cases of HIV every day, that probably would fall on deaf ears.

And speaking of Izzy Hall....the reverend closed his sales pitch for 1576 with an extra special and heretofor hidden punch to the groin of the industry...using Mr. Marcus' allegedly syphilis infected dick.

"I would just like to say, we had a witness here today, Cameron Bay, who very clearly stated that she tested negative and still had HIV while performing on the set, and you saw articles with Mr. Marcus in Los Angeles who was found guilty of infecting and exposing to a female to syphilis on the set and was fined $130,000 just this week and also served jail time," Hall lied. "She's really a person, she's present and she's telling you what happened. Mr. Marcus is a real person. The LA Times didn't just make up a story. It's the reality of what happens, and it's time that we start putting worker safety in front of profit in California."

Of course, it probably wouldn't even register in Hall's brain that if Cameron Bay was indeed infected on that Kink.com set, it probably was because of her own off-the-set sexual activity (or that of her boyfriend); or that Marcus not only did not infect anyone with syphilis (not even the accuser, Lilith Lavey, went that far as to say she was infected, only that he, through cloaking his positive test for syphilis in the face of unemployment, exposed her needlessly to the possibility of infection), but probably couldn't even have infected her because he had undergone the full treatment for the infection and was thusly unable to infect anyone. Even the jail time served was for a parole violation from a previous offense totally unrelated. (Also...condoms would not have prevented the spread of syphilis in areas not protectable by "barriers".) The LA Times may not have the ability to make up stories, but Isadore Hall, thanks to his benefactors at AHF, sure has perfected that art to a crossed T and a dotted I. And a great big L-I-E.

There was one bright moment for the opponents of 1576, though: Senator Leno declared his opposition to the bill in some of the most powerful and succinct tones possible, and it gives at least some hope if this bill ever reaches the full Senate.

"Some of the concerns that have been raised with regard to protecting the privacy of these actors, apparently overwhelming—I know it's anecdotal—opposition to the bill by those who work in the industry, concerns with regard to mandatory HIV testing, all leave me a little uncertain as to whether this is the right way to go," Leno said. "I would imagine with regard to Mr. Marcus, and I don't know why he wasn't fined more than he was, though someone of his ilk very likely could do what he did again even with this bill as law, and as a gay man who has experienced the HIV epidemic in San Francisco over the past 30, 35 years now, lost my own life partner to it, very close...  Those that I worked with in the community for the past three decades, the organizations that started it in the early '80s and are still foundation stones of our HIV/AIDS community in San Francisco, are not in support of this bill. They've remained publicly silent, though I've had some conversations with any numbers of them—I'll leave the names of the organizations out, but they're both treatment and prevention advocates for treatment groups and they have reservations about this—privacy, mandatory HIV testing, things that they have been on the frontlines for the past many years, so for those reasons, I will not be supporting the bill today."

 Alas, he was alone in his opposition, as Senators Mitchell, Huesco, and ultimately Padilla following a brief break, voted to move AB 1576 forward to the Senate Appropriations Committee. It could face hearing there as early as this coming week. After that, on to the full Senate, and then, if it passes that without amendments to be reconciled with the Assembly, on to Governor Jerry Brown's desk for signature or veto.

As always, we'll keep you updated on its progress or lack therof.

Nina Hartley Speaks Out On The Latest HIV Porn Scare (Or...How Truth Is The Only Lysol For Rumor And BS)

[A slightly altered version of this essay was posted to my Red Garter Club blog last night; it is reposted here with some slight alterations to fit BPPA standards, with full permission and approval of both Nina Hartley and Ernest Greene.]


Lots of ink and pixels have been used up in commentary and analysis of the latest HIV in porn scare...and while it does seem for the time being that Cameron Bay and her boyfriend Rod Daily are the only ones directly impacted with their HIV infections, the repercussions of their actions are still being felt throughout the porn disapora.

As expected, the usual suspects are exploiting the tragedy to promote the usual myopia that only by mandating condoms through government fiat will there be true protection of performers. Others are also filling their publicity hound quotas through the usual gay baiting of crossover male performers, or the selective demonization of the system of testing that once again proved effective at its main goal of screening and preventing a mass outbreak.

Given all that, it is very important that people with actual facts and experience be allowed the space and the publicity that apparently is all too often given to the likes of AIDS Healthcare Foundation and their associated shills and rumorists such as Rob Black or Gene Ross or Mike South or Monica Foster. (Note, this is Anthony naming names here; send all complaints straight to me, not Nina or Ernest or anyone else.)

On that note, I give you this extended response to the entire situation that Nina Hartley gave to her Fetlife board last night, for which she and Ernest have given me permission to repost here. Anyone wishing to seperate truth from rumor and facts from BS propaganda, and actually listen to what performers really say rather than just parrot them to fit personal agendas, would be advised to read and take in every word of what Nina says.

The original comment at Fetlife can be found here. I also crossposted it over here at my Red Garter Club blog, adding some embedded links to supporting articles where relevant. Otherwise, it is as Nina originally wrote it.

Read and learn, folks.

Okay, back as promised to take this one on. It’s complicated and will need some explaining, so please bear with me, because this is one of the most important challenges our industry has faced and we need to clear the air around it as much as we can. It won’t be easy because that air has been pretty thick with misinformation and outright lies for a long time.

First, I’d like to address my thanks to the first contributors here:

@ashe58,

Cameron Bay has acquitted herself bravely and ethically and the terrible things that some have said about her remind us, sadly, of how badly stigmatized sex work still is. I can’t even bring myself to address some of the cruel and stupid attacks that have been made on her, so I won’t. I do think that she’s being a bit hard on herself in characterizing what happened to her as a result of irresponsible behavior. It was human behavior which is unpredictable and not always wise, but that doesn’t make it irresponsible.

It is a fact, and hardly a new one, that HIV has been with us a long time. New research suggests it existed in isolated pockets here and there forty years ago. Unless and until a vaccine is developed (and BTW, Aids Healthcare Foundation, the outfit largely responsible for creating not only the current controversy surrounding porn industry STD safeguards but also the more complex and error-prone system of safeguards we have now than existed before they made porn their favorite target, resolutely opposes funding for HIV vaccine research “because it will divert funds from treatment for existing cases,” which are the source of AHF’s $200 million per year income) that HIV is here to stay. It exists in the general population and no matter what safeguards are used, there will be occasional cases in the porn talent pool. There is no 100% fail-safe protection against HIV transmission, condoms included (read the label on the condom box if you don’t believe me because the manufacturers recognize the impossibility of making foolproof barriers), and porn performers possess no special immunity.

All evidence so far, including Cameron’s own courageous testimony, suggests that she contracted the virus through a personal contact not related to her work in the industry. All her professional partners since her last clean test in late July have tested negative and there is no reason to believe that new infections related to hers will appear in the porn talent pool. Medically speaking, female to male transmission of HIV, though not unknown, is rare, as the virus is mainly passed through blood and serum products (like semen) and present in only trace amounts in saliva and vaginal fluid. It would have been unlikely for Cameron to have infected any of her onscreen partners even during the window period between her last clear test and her first positive. Fortunately, she wasn’t working much at the time and her contacts were few. They’re out of the woods already and the industry has gone back to work.

I would question the assertion that newer, younger players are engaged in more irresponsible behavior than their predecessors. If anything, the events of the past couple of years have brought the issue of STD transmission very much to the front of all our minds and while there will always be those who behave recklessly, I still shoot scenes a couple of times a week and have close relations with many partners of differing ages. My impression is that, as a group, they’re far more risk-aware than their “civilian” counterparts. Whatever gets said on social media is not to be confused with fact, which depends on evidence rather than endless repetition to attain credibility.

I’m not quite sure what you mean when you refer to “risky behavior” when no sexual behavior can ever be risk-free. I’ve always disliked the term “safe sex” because physical intimacy with any other human being is not without risk and can never be truly safe in all ways. A jealous partner bursting in on a clandestine assignation and shooting the participants is a risk with a certain percentage of probability, fortunately not the highest but not negligible as risks go. There are various precautions that can be taken against the transmission of STDs but NONE are 100% effective. I’ll try and break that down in greater detail as we move on here, but the indisputable truth is that sex is not a risk-free activity; never has been and never will be.

As a sex educator, my initial response won’t come as much of a surprise. I think what’s needed is accurate and complete information for every sexually active person. The systematic destruction of comprehensive sex education in our public school systems by the relentless attacks of right-wing religious fanatics has endangered all young people and needs to be reversed. We need to teach ALL young people what the physical and psychological risks of sexual activity are in a science-based curriculum through public education. Equip them with the information they need to decide what level of risk they find acceptable and what methods of protection of the many out there suit their individual situations best.
That the industry is “taking a black eye on this” has nothing to do with the industry’s own practices, which are extremely meticulous when it comes to STDS, but rather because political groups with self-serving agendas keep punching us in the face for things that are simply untrue, as the punchers well know.

The fact in this case, as was true in the big “syphilis scare” of a few weeks ago and last summer’s “HIV scare” (which turned out to be yet another example of a personal situation that had no connection to the porn industry beyond the fact that one of those involved worked in it briefly) and even true in the two documented cases of on-set HIV transmission back in 2004, which were the only such cases in het porn since we began comprehensive testing in 1998, is that our hazard mitigation system worked brilliantly, exactly as it was designed to.

STD testing does not prevent STDs. That’s not its purpose. It serves as an early warning system to exclude from the talent pool those trying to get in who are already infected with some contagious condition and alert us as quickly as possible if anyone who passes the initial screening later contracts such a condition. Because we test for not only HIV, but also gonorrhea, Chlamydia, syphilis and hepatitis A and B at least once a month (the industry standard will soon go to twice a month to narrow infection window periods even further) contact tracing when a positive test for any of the above turns up is quick and effective. Performers agree to participate in an industry-wide database that other performers, producers and directors can access by computer to establish that any performer’s test data is clear and up to date. If the tests come up otherwise, the testing facilities contact the performer to come in and re-test immediately, provide contact information and begin treatment and counseling immediately.

There have been all kinds of false rumors spread about this system, but it has proven itself amazingly powerful for over a decade. During that time, the L.A. based het porn industry has turned up a total of two work-related infections in our entire talent pool. To put that in perspective, Los Angeles County, according to its own health department, has recorded nearly 30,000 new HIV infections during that same period.
Considering the age and demographic of porn performers, despite disingenuous claims about the danger we pose to the general public, it would appear that they pose a greater danger to us. Indeed, in the current case, it would appear that the virus was transmitted from the outside in, as the statistics would suggest.

Those who judge Cameron for doing what millions of others do, no matter what they may claim to the contrary, which appears to have been exposing herself to risk with a personal partner she trusted, are contemptible and I feel nothing but compassion for the additional burden she bears of absorbing all that hostility from people who should know better. She appears guilty of doing something human and will pay the highest price of anyone involved for having done so.

In terms of what the industry can do to make itself safer, no system is beyond improvement and improvements are being made. For many years, since Sharon Mitchell, Ernest and Dr. Steven York first established AIM, the community based, performer operated testing and treatment clinic back in 1998, and we relied on the PCR-DNA test for HIV proteins, which was absolutely the state of the art throughout that period. There’s been a lot of loose and downright dishonest talk about how this test works and how it’s distinguished from the “free” tests offered by various walk-in clinics.

The oldest and most common test, the ELISA, searches for HIV antibodies in the blood. It’s the gold standard in one respect. It never throws a false positive. If you have HIV anti-bodies in your system, you’re infected and your body has begun fighting back. However, you can be infected and contagious for up to six months before anti-body production begins. New infections are the most dangerous, as the body’s defenses haven’t mobilized against them yet, and viral loads for new cases can exceed 100,000 before ARV treatment is begun. That’s why it’s imperative we catch new cases sooner.

The PCR-DNA test looks for viral proteins in the blood, which show up no later than two weeks after infection. Two weeks vs. six months is clearly a superior standard. But we haven’t just accepted it as the best there is. Recently, we’ve moved on to the Aptima test, which is based on PCR-RNA analysis and is even more reactive sooner than its predecessor. The Aptima is now the only test whose results are accepted in the PASS database, where a clean result is required to certify a performer as available for work. Does everyone cooperate with this protocol? You bet. Any director or producer who puts a performer to work without that clearance is inviting major liability and performers as a matter of on-set etiquette show their test results to anyone they’re going to work with before doing so.

So one thing we’ve done is to upgrade the quality of the HIV test. We’ve also added some new tests to the panel we do. Hepatitis A and B, as well as syphilis and trichomoniasis are now standard along with the other conditions for which we had previously tested. We are also testing now for HPV, the virus that causes genital warts, and vaccinating those who test negative with Gardisil to make sure they stay that way.

We have not added either Hep C or herpes and there’s a lot of talk about that. The thing is that neither is a reportable STD. Hep C is transmitted blood-to-blood primarily through needle sharing among IV drug users, who are extremely rare in our community. The CDC does not classify it as an STD and clinics aren’t required to report it to health authorities as such. It’s a nasty, often fatal, disease, but it’s not a risk for single-contact sex performances and the hysteria drummed up around it by the Usual Suspects is medically indefensible.
As for herpes, it’s transmitted skin-to-skin and can be passed by contact at any part of the body. Condoms do little to reduce the risk (as is also the case with bacterial bugs like Chlamydia and surface viruses like HPV) and barriers won’t stop it. Indeed, since 70% of the adult population would test positive for either Herpes A or Herpes B according to the CDC, the harm reduction from testing would be minimal.

Remember what I said about it being impossible to create an entirely safe system. An error rate of zero is impossible, so you enter this business with some assumption of risk. We minimize it very effectively but we can’t promise to eliminate all risk.

That is true of any job. According to The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the ten most dangerous jobs in America are:

1. Fishing
2. Logging
3. Aircraft piloting
4. Refuse and recyclable material collection
5. Roofing
6. Structural iron and steel work
7. Construction
8. Farming
9. Truck driving
10. Mining

There are clinical deaths in significant numbers associated with every one of these trades.

Since porn was legalized in the U.S. 40 years ago there hasn’t been a single job-related fatality on any porn set. Even mainstream film loses half a dozen stunt players a year. Is porn completely safe? No. Is it dangerous in the way any of the jobs listed above are? Hardly.

But why wouldn’t mandatory condoms make it even safer?

It’s a logical question but the answer is counterintuitive. Porn sex is a performance. It’s not like the sex most people have at home. Depressingly, Masters and Johnson found in their groundbreaking studies a few decades ago that the average American couple typically completes an act of sexual intercourse in about eleven minutes from foreplay to orgasm. That’s a sad thing and the subject for a post all its own, but it tells you nothing about what sex on a porn set is like.

Typically, because we shoot multiple angles on multiple positions, in addition to shooting stills, wrangling lights and cameras and other gear and dealing with technical problems of all sorts. It takes about two hours to shoot a good hardcore scene. Condoms were never intended for that kind of industrial use. Hard-ons come and go. Condoms roll down, come off, dry out, split and otherwise fail on sets about 30% of the time. I know this because I work mainly for Adam&Eve, one of the companies most supportive of performer choice when it comes to condom use, and Ernest and I have shot miles of condom footage. We’re left with little confidence regarding the efficacy of condoms for this application.

And speaking personally, I can tell you that they have, for many female performers, a serious drawback. I’ve taken a lot of crap for saying this in other places, but facts just refuse to conform to PC ideas of how things should work. Condoms, no matter how lubricated and how designed, create more internal friction on a woman’s intimate anatomy than human skin, with which it’s evolved to tolerate contact. All-condom players, and I’ve known many of them tend to turn up at clinics with raw internal tissues and multiple surface infections. This we call “condom rash” and it’s more than an annoyance. Intact tissues are the first line of defense against infection. If your insides are compromised by friction burns and low-grade bugs of whatever sort, you’re that much more vulnerable to whatever might be turned loose should a condom fail.

Those who have never worked as performers love to dismiss this as bullshit urban legend. Those who do that have zero experience with the realities of shooting a hardcore scene. Condoms make everything take longer. They make everything less comfortable for male and female players. They can’t be trusted to operate as intended. They create conditions conducive to contagion. These circumstances are unique to porn and I wouldn’t suggest the general population abandon using condoms, though I do think testing for non-sex-workers is still an excellent idea and recommend it highly, if only for your own peace of mind.

The safest sex you can have, on or off camera, remains sex with an uninfected partner, and this is where things get dicey. I ask those who favor mandatory condoms in porn this question: If you knew you were HIV-, would you knowingly have intercourse with someone who is HIV+, condom or no? Anyone who honestly answers yes to that question has a very different notion of safe behavior from mine. I prefer to know that anyone I have sex with has been tested with the best available methods and carries no communicable disease. In fact, I accept no less for either work or play. I see a current test or intercourse doesn’t happen.

Given all this, why is there such a huge battle being fought over this issue here in Los Angeles?

The answer is political. Epidemiology, as any doctor will tell you, is a highly political form of medicine. There are always those willing to use the threat of epidemic to push some other kind of political agenda having nothing to do with health.

In this case, Aids Healthcare Foundation, the largest HIV service organization in the world (and a stakeholder in the world’s largest condom manufacturer, BTW) has taken it upon itself to come after the porn business in order to force condom use on performers who overwhelmingly prefer to make their own choices of protection methods and bitterly oppose the idea of having government agencies tell them how to do their scenes and protect their own health. This has been a big generator of publicity for AHF, which not only hauls in $200 million a year but pays its director, Michael Weinstein whose face has become so familiar from this controversy, over $600,000 a year to act as its front man. It’s a huge enterprise that claims non-profit status but is currently under investigation by Los Angeles County for Medicaid fraud.

Mr. Weinstein et al think that Porn, by showing barrier-free intercourse acts as, in his words: “commercials for unsafe sex.” He and his supporters in the UCLA working group and at Cal-OSHA think that porn should be compelled by law to make safe sex commercials. Sorry, but this thing called The First Amendment not only prohibits censorship, it also prohibits compelled speech. If AHF wants to make porn with condoms to push its own ideas about sex, it has more than enough money to do so. What Measure B and all of AHF’s other machinations cannot do is force pornographers to include content in their products that they don’t want there.

Yes, money is a factor for both sides of this dispute. The porn buying public overall doesn’t want condoms visible in the picture because it detracts from the fantasy of perfect, carefree sex they pay to indulge. The one company in het porn that requires condoms (and that company, which gets a lot of head-pats from AHF and others only requires condom use for its contract performers and not for any of the day players they use in their many, many other scenes) is uncompetitive in DVD sales by its own admission and makes most of its money off cable softcore, in which condoms aren’t an issue. No company that has attempted to market all-condom products to het audiences has managed to stay in business.

Likewise, AHF also has a dog in the fight. Not only do they manufacture and sell condoms, for which they would force us to make commercials, but they also make no secret of their willingness to “consult” for a hefty fee in instituting an all-condom protocol in the porn industry. AHF has sued its way into lucrative consulting jobs like this before. When Pfizer first introduced Viagra, AHF “offered” to consult with the company so that Viagra users would be properly advised of the risks of unprotected sex with this new product. AHF wanted $5 million for that service. Pfizer declined. AHF sued them for $50 million alleging unsafe marketing practices. Pfizer caved on the consulting deal. The lawsuit mysteriously faded away. Now Viagra commercials carry teeny-tiny little disclaimers warning consumers that it doesn’t protect them from HIV or other STDS. That’s what Pfizer got from AHF for its $5 million, along with immunity from litigation.

See, we know all about AHF’s litigation practices first hand. Internal emails between Weinstein and AHF’s chief counsel Bryan Chase (this has all been posted online if you care to check it out) decided early on that the effectiveness of our existing system as administered by AIM was the Number One obstacle to AHF’s political ambitions and had to be destroyed if AHF’s claim that performers worked without protection was to be made credible. Toward that end, AHF used tax-free funding to hire AIM’s lab messenger as a spy to dig through AIM’s operations in search of dirt that could be used against it. AHF and Cal-OSHA initiated a series of nuisance litigations against AIM, a tiny non-profit NGO that tested at cost and often barely had money to keep the lights on at the clinic, leading to AIM’s ultimate bankruptcy. AHF did its best to create the threat, not previously there, upon which they built the Measure B campaign that’s raised millions in funding and made them constantly visible in the media at the expense of increasing my risk.

The Free Speech Coalition, the industry’s trade organization, which answers mainly to producers, stepped in to help create a new database to replace AIM’s, which has been very helpful in the Cameron Bay case to be sure, still does not operate a full-service, centralized clinic of its own. It depends for reporting of test results on the cooperation of private clinics that don’t all have the same methods of testing and reporting, which leaves us with a less effective means of monitoring the entire talent pool simultaneously and opens the door to possible test report fraud because of lack of uniformity in the reporting forms used. This opens the door to new dangers that have already been hinted at in recent months by confusion over confirmatory tests for suspected STD cases conducted at different facilities.

Thanks, Mr. Weinstein, for your demonstrations of concern for all of our wellbeing. That you enjoy virtually no support among actively working performers should tell you something. But no, absent all tangible evidence to support it, AHF has now filed a complaint with Cal-OSHA against kink.com simply because that was the last place where Cameron Bay shot a scene, even though at the time she shot it her tests were still all negative.

Should Measure B remain on the books, much less be extended to the entire state of California as AHF would like, the result will be an erosion of the testing system. The great advantage porn in California enjoys over other forms of sex work in other places is its legality. We can call 911 if we have an accident or an altercation on set (not that these are common occurrences by any means) and not get arrested for doing so. If we are named as contacts in a potential contagion pool, we can be asked to confirm that we were or were not contacts without admitting to violating the law because we didn’t use condoms, and in admitting this, subject our employers to potential legal consequences that would put them out of business.

The result of this is already obvious. We used to pull permits from L.A. County so we could get production insurance and shoot legally in a state where doing so is not prohibited. We used to tweet from sets talking up the projects we were working on.

Now we’re back to shooting in secret without permits and asked to keep our cell phones off because we know that the gang from AHF is monitoring some of our feeds and using that information to try and organize set inspections.

This is all going to be sorted out at great expense in court eventually. Last week in the first round of FSC’s challenge to Measure B, the judge chose not to take up the constitutional issue of compelled speech, but stripped Measure B of most of its enforcement powers on the grounds that they would require what amounted to a blanket search warrant of all sexually explicit shoots without a warrant, which the judge viewed as trampling all over The Fourth Amendment. Both sides have already appealed.

Meanwhile, this battle rages in the media on sites like this one to the detriment of people like me. I like being in a legal business. I like being able to shoot on nice locations in the open without fear of arrest. I don’t care to go back to clandestine operations for a perfectly legal business. And I don’t trust those trying to push their program on me to protect my health as well as I can and my fellow performers will if left to do so as they have been for the last dozen years.

Do I think the industry bears no blame in all of this? Hardly. Contrary to accusations certain people loooove hurling at me that I’m an enormously wealthy shill for the producers (yeah, right, so where’s my check, boys?); I have my share of gripes with them. Ernest and I warned the leadership of the FSC six months before AIM was put out of business that this would happen if those who could afford to resist AHF’s malicious lawsuits failed to do so. They failed to do so and AIM closed. We also warned them they’d face political challenges from AHF for which they were unprepared. They paid no heed and ran a truly inept campaign against Measure B, which was qualified for the ballot with questionable petitions that should have been challenged but weren’t. Instead, showing a complete ignorance of L.A. politics, the FSC campaigned against Measure B in a Democratic, pro-labor, pro-regulation stronghold with arguments about lost revenues, lost jobs and lost tax money that would have gone over much better in Orange County than in bright blue Los Angeles. And instead of letting performers speak for themselves, which they do most articulately and from the most immediate personal concerns, they let the producers do the talking to the media. Swell idea. Everyone loves porn producers, right?

This is and has always been about our health and safety as performers and frankly I don’t think anyone else has much standing to address it. Between them, our friends and our enemies have managed to make us less safe and less able to earn our livings and there’s no good outcome in sight. AHF will never back off for as long as they can get airtime with their crusade. We will never effectively push them back until we let performers and doctors take the lead for us and stop whining about lost revenues when lives are at stake.

And until this issue is resolved, you’re going to see every isolated case like that of the unfortunate Ms. Bay turned into a political football by people who don’t care a bit about her, me or any of us.

It’s a long post, and I thank those who took the time to read it. When next you’re confronted with all the usual lies, half-truths and distortions that have been spun around the real issue of performer safety, feel free to quote Nina Hartley, former AIM board member, RN and sex-worker advocate when you let the hot air out of their dishonest and cynical propaganda.

There are lives at stake here, including mine. Nobody should be playing politics with them.