Taking aim at barebacking videos

Can barebacking in gay porn videos be curbed?

The ongoing debate over gay porn videos featuring performers having unprotected anal sex - barebacking - has intensified in recent months. (The term, by the way, is derived from riding a horse without a saddle.)

The question as to why barebacking has become increasingly popular, both in adult films and in everyday life, has become something of the elephant in the room in the gay community: something that's going on despite the health risks, but really not discussed.

In an article on the website The Body (the Complete HIV/AIDS Resource) Rick Sowadsky, a�communicable disease specialist�studying�AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), looked at the pro and cons of barebacking, as well as the reasons why men continue to do despite the health risks. (Click here to read his pros and cons.)

Sowadsky concludes: "For some gay men, the benefits of unprotected anal intercourse (intimacy, pleasure, etc.) outweigh the risks (HIV and other STDs). On the other hand, if two gay men have unprotected anal intercourse, and neither of them is infected with HIV, nor any other STD, then barebacking would be completely safe as far as infectious diseases are concerned. But if either partner has HIV or another STD, then there are significant risks of infection for these diseases through barebacking. Future HIV and STD prevention efforts targeted toward the gay community must incorporate the issue of barebacking."

Demand high for barebacking videos

Just as the adult male video industry (hit hard by the recession and the growth of amateur and pirated porn on the Internet) is shrinking, barebacking is more popular than ever. While the major adult male video companies continue to produce condom-only content, smaller companies produce nothing but condom-free product. One reason is demand.

"Bareback? I don't even consider that a fetish anymore, it's become so big," said the owner of one Los Angeles gay video rental store to writer C. Brian Smith in the Advocate in May 2009.

In his piece, entitled Porn Panic! Smith also spoke to Tyler Reed, who runs a small adult male video company called USA Jock Studios, who said: "As a small company, I am forced by distributors to shoot bareback content. Unless you have extremely high-quality models, sets, and so forth, distributors won't even touch the safe content anymore... Bareback sells two-to-one, guaranteed. And if you put the word 'bareback' in the title, you're looking at three-to-one."

Yet barebacking remains a highly debated issue, partly because many feel that barebacking videos encourage the behavior, making it seem commonplace and desirable.

This has led an increasing number of organizations to target these videos contending they encourage the spread of HIV infections, particularly among young gay and bisexual men.

Two years ago adult film entrepreneur ChiChi Larue felt compelled to make a public service announcement against barebacking, stating that the rise of barebacking videos featuring younger models is a worrisome trend. "The fear I have is that when we are silent and choose to ignore issues as serious as this," Larue concluded, "then perhaps barebacking in porn will just keep increasing like HIV infection rates. Then more and more models will be sucked into putting their health at risk to make porn!"

IML bans barebacking videos

More recently attention focused on the annual Another recent development is that after unsuccessfully petitioning the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board to require that all adult film performers be required to use condoms, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in April filed a against nine talent agencies that promote performers willing to have unprotected sex.

And the death of a bareback porn star Chad Noel from an AIDS-related illness in March grabbed headlines and gave the issue added attention.

From the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s until the mid-1990s, the adult entertainment industry voluntarily adopted the requirement that performers practice safe sex in porn films, but many producers dropped the practice when drugs became widely available to control, but not cure, HIV.

Some producers never returned to the days before AIDS, when condoms were hardly ever seen in pornography. (They still aren't in straight porn where most content - both vaginal and anal - is performed without the use of condoms.)

EDGE spoke with those on both sides of the barebacking debate.

"We get over 5,000 people from all over the world going through the market," Chuck Renslow, president and executive producer of International Mr. Leather, said when asked why he banned materials featuring unprotected sex from the event. "People new to the fetish scene who don't understand barebacking think it must be okay to do it."

Renslow informed vendors in a statement on the policy he issued last year.

"Though we are now three decades into the HIV/AIDS epidemic, no cure has been found," he told vendors. "The CDC and local health officials inform us that new infections are on the rise. And, while we have had some success developing medications that might make infection more manageable, that accomplishment comes at a price. Not having experienced the deaths - the loss of loved ones - which preceded these medications, we have an entire generation who may not fully appreciate or comprehend the severity of the situation."

The ban covers any product that promotes or advocates barebacking and includes the distribution of gifts, post cards or any other information.

Renslow told EDGE that International Mr. Leather's executive committee would have instituted the ban earlier, but the organization had contractual obligations with vendors that hadn't expired until now.

He emphasized that he's only interested in ending the promotion of barebacking, not the act itself. "If two informed adults wish to do it, it's their business," Renslow said. "It's like smoking. If you want to bareback and you know it's going to kill you, that's fine."

Safe sex is hot sex

The Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the nation's largest provider of health services to people with HIV, has been waging a battle with California's adult entertainment industry for some time to stop producing videos and other materials featuring unprotected sex.

Tactics have included picketing venues where such products are distributed, filing suits against Los Angeles County and filing complaints with the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health.

According to Michael Weinstein, the foundation's president, its goal is to protect the performers "and send a better message out to the world that safer sex can also be hot sex." That's why, in its latest effort, it filed a labor complaint with the state against the talent agencies.

The California Department of Industrial Relations has assigned an investigator to the case, which Weinstein said is heartening because ordinarily the department is not required to handle complaints not made by an employee.

"We're looking at everyone who benefits from putting these performers at risk: the producers, the hotels that show it, the talent agencies that procure the people and the clinic that does the STD testing that serves as the fig leaf for the industry."

Performers in porn videos are sent to two clinics in the San Fernando Valley operated by the Adult Industry Medical Association, a relationship that Weinstein maintains is too cozy.

Weinstein told EDGE he would like to eliminate barebacking in all situations unless the partners know each other well and are aware of their HIV status.

"Our goal is not have any new clients," he said. "We want to break the chain of infection. Personally, I lived through the worst of AIDS in the gay community. I lived through a time when safer sex was the norm and 100 percent of gay videos used condoms. We're doing everything we can to return to that time."

Weinstein reported that there is at least one precedent for government regulation of sex for profit. Prostitution is legal in a state neighboring California. "The brothels in Nevada have had testing and mandatory condom use," he pointed out. "As a result, there's been no transmission of HIV and STD rates are low."

Some producers in the gay adult entertainment industry never stopped requiring condom use as so many did in the mid-1990s.

Lucas :: government legislation

Michael Lucas is a prominent producer of and performer in gay sex videos. According to his biography, his company, Lucas Entertainment, is one of the most successful porn empires in the world.

His studio, based in New York City, has earned many nominations and wins from the GayVN Awards, billed as the Oscars of the adult entertainment industry. Last year, Lucas was inducted into the GayVN Hall of Fame.

Michael Lucas' La Dolce Vita, released in 2006 with a budget of $250,000, is said to be the most expensive gay porn film ever made. The movie swept the 2007 GayVN Awards, including Best Picture.

Lucas feels so strongly about using protection in videos that he has spoken out against barebacking for many years.

He told EDGE that the Internet has vastly increased the availability of porn to what is now a worldwide audience. Many are young people who are exploring their sexuality and seeing gay sex for the first time. Essentially, they rely on porn as a guide to how to have sex rather than reading a sex-education brochure.

"Barebacking encourages those who are living in Iowa, in Russia, in Utah, in South America, in places where people don't know about safe sex, particularly young people who are starting to come out and starting having sex," he maintained.

"Usually young people see adult movies first. Either they will see bareback films or those with condoms. Hopefully that will make them think that they are there for a purpose. There's a high probability they will copy what they see. If they see a condom being used, there's no 100-percent guarantee that they will use a condom, but it increases the chances."

Lucas contended that he could make more money by producing bareback videos. "Unprotected sex is big a selling point," he acknowledged, particularly among studios that produce low-budget movies without the high quality of those he and others in what he termed the world's top eight gay studios. Most, he reported, are still producing videos in which performers wear condoms.

But even some of the major studios are beginning to include some unprotected sex.

"Sometimes they will do something special," he said, such as featuring longtime boyfriends who, it's assumed, know their HIV status. "It's totally irrelevant whether they are boyfriends in real life. Some companies think it's okay. That's not okay."

Many adult entertainment retailers purposely market barebacking videos by featuring them prominently, Lucas maintained.

"If you walk into a video store the first thing you see in the gay section are barebacking films," he said. "It's not about quality. It is about cheaply produced movies featuring a photo of an asshole with cum dripping out of it on the cover."

Lucas supports government regulation of the adult entertainment industry to ban unprotected sex.

Keep it hot, sexy and safe

Although he no longer performs in gay videos, Will Clark was once a big name in the industry. He started appearing in them in the mid-1990s and made about 50 films, most successfully in the leather and BDSM genres. He always used condoms in the productions.

Clark has been honored by the Grabby Awards, another event recognizing the work of gay porn producers and performers. He shared the Performer of the Year Award with Cole Tucker in 1999. In 2002, he was inducted as a member of the Grabbys Wall of Fame for promoting safe-sex videos and his fundraising work for AIDS organizations.

His work for AIDS causes has earned him a host of other awards, many of them from the adult entertainment industry. Clark now devotes his time to organizing special event benefits in major cities throughout the country.

As a contributor to gay online magazines, Clark told EDGE he always ended his columns with "Keep it hot, keep it safe, keep it sexy."

His promotion of safe sex in videos also earned him some animus from bareback porn producers.

"I had a couple of death threats," Clark reported. He also said the executive director of Aid for AIDS International, an organization helping people with the virus in Latin America and the Caribbean with whom he has worked, was threatened in an e-mail from a bareback performer:

"The message said, 'I'm going to come down to your office and rape you and infect you with HIV.' We also had a lot of pushback from people who said, 'Oh, condoms don't work.' I don't know if that's crystal meth talking or people are crazy."

Unlike Michael Lucas, Clark does not advocate government bans on bareback videos.

"It's kind of a moot point," he said. "You can't outlaw it. It's protected under free speech. The only thing you can appeal to is the producers' good sense."

He continued: "You cannot legislate desire. You cannot legislate good will and you cannot force people to wear condoms at gunpoint. You can't force people to find condoms attractive and say that they are not turned on by bareback sex. The thing you have to do is get as many producers as possible to use condoms."

While he lauds the AIDS Healthcare Foundation for trying to get California government agencies to ban unprotected sex in the adult entertainment industry, Clark believes such efforts are impractical. "The bareback producers will just get out of California and move to Las Vegas or somewhere else."

He called barebacking "pretty much the last bastion" in gay porn.

"It's still edgy. Much has been created around the barebacking culture. If the end result wasn't somebody getting sick and dying, I would be really fascinated by it. There's something about death that really doesn't turn me on."

Testing a solution?

Some bareback porn stars apparently have seen the light and are now only engaging in protected sex on the screen.

One is Brent Corrigan, who performed bareback in videos while he was a teen. Later he became an advocate for safer sex and has apologized to the gay community for his youthful indiscretions.

Like some other porn performers, Corrigan volunteered his time to The Free Speech Coalition, the trade association of the adult entertainment industry, believes self-regulation is the best way to address barebacking.