For some porn connoisseurs, the condom kills the money shot.
Nevertheless, the Los Angeles City Council has passed an ordinance that requires adult film stars to use protection while filming. It’s widely believed that Los Angeles (San Fernando Valley) is where 90 percent of adult films are made in the $12 billion a year industry.
The LAPD must enforce the condom act, although the city is scrambling to figure out exactly how to do that, outside of conducting random busts on film sets.
Currently, the porn industry enforces its own safety measure, which is an STD test every 30 days for adult film stars. However, “testing is not prevention in the same way that a barrier protection is,” said AIDS Healthcare Foundation spokesperson Ged Kenslea.
Kenslea — who wants porn stars to wear condoms while filming — has also accused the industry of not revealing all cases of STDs contracted on the job.
Gonorrhea and chlamydia are par for the course in the adult film industry, and a few years ago, an HIV outbreak shut the industry down.
In 2010, Los Angeles County health officials accused the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation; the agency that tests porn stars for STDs, of stonewalling the investigation of 16 unpublicized HIV infected porn stars.
One female porn actress tested positive for HIV and worked the following day, possibly exposing the other actor and her real-life boyfriend to the disease. Those two men subsequently had sex with a total of six other people; all people involved were tested for HIV and were not infected at that time.
In 2004, the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation identified a black porn star as HIV-positive because he infected three other actresses before he knew of his status.
Those who worked with the star were placed under quarantine.
Right now, porn’s major players are in Las Vegas for their annual retreat and awards show, the Adult Entertainment Expo. Christian Mann, general manager of Evil Angel Productions, scoffed at the ordinance, because, again, the porn connoisseurs prefer their porn on the raw and risky side.
“You can’t actually compel an industry to create a product that the market doesn’t want,” Mann told reporters.
