Reports L.A. Weekly. Cal-OSHA rules already require that performers be protected from bloodborne pathogens (i.e., condoms are already “mandatory” in the state of California), but that’s obviously not being enforced, unless you count limply trying to fine studios like Treasure Island Media after the fact. Today’s vote won’t change a thing for gay porn studios (or straight porn studios for that matter, which will either take their productions out of L.A. or just ignore the unenforceable law and shoot bareback anyway), but it does put a little wind in the sails of the hypocritical weasels at AIDS Healthcare Foundation, who have been pushing for the measure. Still, it’s nothing more than a symbolic victory for them (and their right wing religious nutjob allies at the American Family Association).
If Rusty did a bareback scene then what can he expect.
I still don’t understand why anyone would NOT want to use condoms. If you’re determined to commit suicide, there are faster and easier ways, and they don’t take everyone else down with you either.
That is their choice not yours, worry about yourself and again if you don’t like bareback porn then don’t watch it.
Yes it is their choice. Since it is their choice then they shouldn’t have an issue paying for their own meds if they do come down with HIV or some other STD right?
It may indeed be their own choice to be a walking petri dish, but they take that choice out of other people’s hands by not protecting them from their disease. And yes, both partners share equal responsibility for safety, but guess what, people are stupid and people lie.
Second, I agree with Estelle. If they make the choice to not take the necessary precautions in full knowledge of the inevitable consequences, then they get no sympathy or support from me. Pay for your own mistakes – don’t slut yourself about like a bucket-cunt and then leech off the taxpayer to buy your meds while you continue spreading your filth.
Like it or not, our society allows government to have some control over private enterprise when it comes to the protection of the employees (or independent contractors). Since this is a California thing, let’s compare the porn industry to the mainstream movie industry. Cal-OSHA has rules in place to protect stuntmen and women. Obviously, movie producers could save tons of money if they didn’t have to provide safety equipment for those stunts. They do protect the performers because it’s the law and it’s ethical. I don’t see how the adult industry should be a special case.
Cal-OSHA does not have a secret agenda to close down all adult companies through this condom requirement. The legitimate adult companies produce far too much tax revenue for that. I’m fairly certain that Cal-OSHA wouldn’t object to having condoms digitally removed from the final product, since they don’t object to the content of any mainstream horror/torture movie. Of course, it’s not economically possible to digitally remove condoms and still make money. So, I admit that’s a bit of a straw man’s argument.
Isn’t comparing the porn movie industry with the G-R rated movie industry like comparing apples to oranges? I mean when you’re watching porn these guys are actually performing oral sex and unless photoshop has evolved immensely they are actually fucking. When you see a R-rated movie with people shooting each other it is fake right?
And isn’t it all about personal responsibility? Who is forcing these guys to fuck on camera with or without condoms? Isn’t this another example of the government protecting us from ourselves?
I don’t think comparing adult films to mainstream films is apples to oranges. I don’t think your shooting analogy holds. Going back to stunt people: imagine filming a high-speed car chase. The chance that a trained stunt driver will lose control and flip a car is small. Still, the cars have tons of extra safety features just in case. All of that stuff costs money; but, the production spends the money because Cal-OSHA requires it, the union requires it, and it’s the right thing to do.
Do performers filming a bareback scene always get HIV or another STD? Of course not. There’s just a small chance that would happen. Mainstream film producers have to spend thousands to protect their performers. Adult film producers would only have to spend a couple bucks for a box of condoms.
I do, however, agree that performers need to take responsibility. Still, not everyone can be an expert on everything. I consider myself to be pretty well informed. My first job out of college never covered bloodborne pathogens. When I left and went to another company and got properly trained, I discovered that there were times I had been put at risk in my former job. (I was Night Manager of a hotel dealing with occasional medical emergencies.) If a major hotel chain can fail to cover bloodborne pathogens, I have little faith in the myriad small adult production companies to properly inform their actors. That’s why OSHA exists.
All good points, but you know a lot of times the porn industry is its own worst enemy. SX Video doesn’t test their models at all. Rusty Stevens confirmed this. A few years ago SX on their blog put up a post about a former model named Jason Reed and pointing out that his movie was the lowest selling video SX ever had. Obviously done out of spite and pettiness. Jason Reed responded that he quit SX because of some unethical things they did when he was there. Reed was HIV positive and was paired with a HIV negative model who thought Reed was negative because he told the producers he would only work with negative models. The comments were quickly deleted but the blog post was kept up.
http://www.sxvideo.tv/blogs/blog_054.php
Or the low rent straight studio that shows girls snorting up semen among other things scream “We are a perfectly safe industry.” Nor did the release of thousands of pornstars legal names take from a AIM database that just about anyone who had a few hundred dollars to spend had access (not to mention the shared passwords).
Who’s to say that Jason Reed was making that up because he had a disagreement with SX? There are two sides to every story…
True but at the same time, Rusty Stevens also said that SX Video did not have any kind of testing protocol when he worked for them. One of his first bareback scenes was with Jason Reed. That would give some credibility to his story that SX Video either didn’t care or didn’t protect their models.
http://www.sxvideo.com/barebackauditions.aspx
If this is true and can be proven in court, then SX Video should be held ciminally liable and charged as those who knowingly infect uniformed sex partners and lie about their status. I believe they use attempted murder as the charge.
Putting a negative person together with a poz partner and lying about the status of the poz performer is not only morally and ethically wrong it is criminal.
I am Jason Reed and you’ve got your story backwards. I stopped shooting videos with SX when I found out that one of the models I was paired with was not HIV+. I told the director I would not work with any models that were not positive out of risk of infecting someone else; regardless of whether they were aware and willing or not I wasn’t ok with it.
Right as we were about to shoot, I don’t recall how the subject came up, but it became apparent that the other model was negative (which was a show stopper for me), and had not even been told that I was positive (which really set me off). I immediately stormed up to the director’s office because he hadn’t come down to the set yet and quit on the spot.
There’s actually a lot more to the story than this. I never wanted to even be Jason Reed to begin with. I had done 1 solo video for SX Video a couple years before because I had needed the money to help pay my rent. 2 years past after that until I ever did another video. It wasn’t until the director behind SX happened to remember me when he saw me working at yogurt shop, I was in an outpatient rehab program and had just gotten that job making minimum wage. When he saw me he offered me a job working in the warehouse at his studio so I took the job and over the course of about 2 years I worked my way up to being in charge of all the wholesale distribution of SX’s DVDs. But I had to put up with being Jason Reed to keep that job because almost immediately after I began working their, it was explained to me in not so many words that if I wanted to keep my job, I had to also be available to work in front of the camera at the directors discretion. So anytime a model happened to not show up, or whatever the case was, I’d go from making sales calls to distribution companies in the morning, to sucking dick in front of the camera in the afternoon, and hopefully have enough time to finish up my office work before the end of the day.
I should have never put up with it. But my mindset at the time was; I was dealing with a drug addiction and past criminal record due to that, I felt lucky to have a job, any job.. and I was actually pretty good at the distribution work (in fact after I quit working at SX, I took a job for about a year working for Helix Studios where I kickstarted their distribution market (and never worked in front of the camera).
Here is the thing, if you don’t like bareback porn then don’t watch it. Guys that get into bareback porn know what they are getting into and know the risk. Same with smoking when you go to a restaurant they give to a choice would you like smoking section or none smoking. Yet you have dumb asses that will complain and want to make everyone suffer, which is not going to make people stop smoking. Sounds like they are trying to control everyone’s lives, regardless people are going to continue to do what they want
There’s no such thing as a smoking section in a restaurant in California. And all those laws restricting smoking? It’s made the number of smokers drop like a rock. In other words, all your arguments are disproved by reality.
Of course people shouldn’t be given the option to potentially kill themselves in the workplace. Of course it only makes sense to outlaw the filming of Death Fetish porn for the sake of the performers, who, if necessary, must be protected from themselves. The state can’t be in the business of sactioning the killing of its workers.
But don’t worry — even if this were 100% successfully enforced, there’d be plenty of amateur maniacs and morons putting Death Fetish porn on the Internet to satisfy even the most ghoulish of fans.
The point is that the sane rational thinking applied to other workplace safety regulations most likely would not be used for the sex industry by those who think porn is a moral sin and should be against the law. And using the “work place saftey” guidlines many more regulations could possibly be enacted. Pissing, fisting, piss, cum, BDSM, rimming, and other forms of erotica could be affected. So the fight to regulate it potentially would not stop at condom use. And the more regulations they can get against the industry the more likely it will simply move to another area, even if necessary outside of the USA. The porn could still be filmed here, secretly, and as long as the company is based in another country AND that’s where the records and proof of age are kept, then they would still be making it. Or they would simply go out of business if the profit wasn’t enough to justify the changes. And the profitability is not what it used to be with the theft and piracy of porn that is going on now. The supply would be therefor be reduced, which could affect the pricing, and make it much more expensive for the consumer.
Let me reiterate, this is NOT a endorsement of barebacking. I do think condoms should be used in both str8 and gay porn. It’s the potential regulations that are at stake here.
This was meant to be posted in the main comment thread, not as a reply to X.
“Unenforcable” is definitely the key word here, because the item is going to have to go to a voter referendum, and the Cite Attorney has filed a suit to keep that from happening.
It has to start somewhere. If the industry won’t regulate itself, then of course some religious nut jobs are going try do it.
It’s not unreasonable to expect conditions in the work place to ensure the safety of all involved.
If you work with food you must wear gloves, if you work on a construction site you must wear a hard hat, if you work in a surgery you must wear a mask over your mouth.
I can’t understand why the adult industry thinks its above the law.
I agree 100%
“Tired of the bullshit” hit the nail on the head, this is only the first step to basically forcing all sorts of draconian laws against the adult entertainment industry. It will start with condoms for fucking, then next it will be condoms and dental dams for oral sex, a ban on anal sex, no more facial cum shots, etc.
AHF is nothing more than a pathetic power grab by a few individuals with big egos, yet they have done some serious damage against the adult entertainment industry now and it is guaranteed there will be more to come from them.
Think about that people.
lol I can already see the JetSetMen parody of this! condom protective services going company to company ensuring that they’re being used, and while they’re at it they get fucked!
If they are enforced, they will simply move somewhere else. And while I agree they should be used, I don’t think that it’s a law that is actually enforcable, maybe it is, I’m not a lawyer. But it is a slippery slope, what next will they regulate? Cum eating, piss play? Oral sex without protection? Once that boundry is broken, it is conceivable that it could be used to further restrict and regulate the adult industry by right wing religious zealots, in the hope that they can shut down the industry in this country. I know that sounds pretty far fetched and it is, but it IS possible should our government be taken over by the far right extremist(the recent deadlock in congress over the budget shows just what a FEW can do, imagine if they had a larger support base). They could back their fight with the rationalization it is for the “health of the american public” instead of their moral objections.
I know most of you will think I’m probably a raving lunatic. But look just how the abortion rights are being whittled away, state by state, regulations making it more and more difficult.
Again, I know it is pretty unlikely, but it COULD happen.
It would be different if you didn’t have all these gay porn companies going bareback. Its the companies fault this is happening. No one elses.
Condoms should be mandatory!
They already are!
All Hail the Nanny-State!!
Stop posting under my fucking name! Although, I do agree.
How soon before the city organizes the Condom Patrol?
This is not North Korea it’s america a free country so no it shouldn’t!