Showdown Looming on Banning Bareback Porn

Efforts to pressure the adult entertainment industry to stop featuring unprotected sex in porn films may have reached a tipping point. Events in Southern California, the epicenter of the industry, during December indicate a showdown is on the horizon.

On Dec. 9, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health shut down a San Fernando Valley medical clinic that existed to provide HIV testing to gay and straight porn actors and was funded within the industry.

The Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation had operated clinics in Sherman Oaks and Granada Hills since 1998, but Los Angeles DPH officials didn't know until last April that it never had a license.

AIM applied to the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health, charged with enforcing regulations protecting California's workers, for a license in June. Saying it was incomplete, Cal/OSHA denied the application two days before the county closed the clinics.

DPH said porn actors could get tested at county clinics. One other facility for the industry is operated by Talent Testing Services in Northridge.

The action capped a busy week in the controversy over bareback sex in gay and straight videos.

Crossover (read: gay-for-pay) porn actor Derrick Burts called for mandatory condom use in films after an HIV test at AIM in October showed he had the virus. Burts has performed in straight films as Cameron Reid and gay films as Derek Chambers.

Earlier, San Francisco-based Treasure Island Media, which produces bareback gay porn and has become not only the leader in such films but something of a lightening rod and de facto spokespersons for the practice, promoted what is believed to be the first real-life, sero-discordant couple (to have gay sex on screen.

The studio bills HIV-positive James Roscoe and HIV-negative Brad McGuire as "role models."

Treasure Island Media just a few days previously had announced that it will appeal fines totaling $21,470 () Cal/OSHA imposed last March because the studio lacked universal precautions and employees engaged in unprotected sex.

The Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the nation's largest provider of health services to people with HIV, has taken the lead in trying to outlaw bareback porn. Last spring, it filed a labor complaint against nine talent agencies because they promote actors willing to have unprotected sex on screen.

That was only the latest in a string of complaints the organization filed against the industry.

Responding to a petition the foundation filed in December 2009, the California Department of Industrial Relations, of which Cal/OSHA is part, recently conducted hearings in Los Angeles and Oakland.

An advisory committee is charged with making recommendations on whether to strengthen Section 5193 of a state law regulating occupational exposure to blood-borne pathogens such as HIV and hepatitis B and C to specifically mention condom use in porn videos.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation petition also proposes amendments to training and expansion of the scope of medical services an employer would be required to provide, including screening and treatment for all sexually transmitted diseases, in addition to those considered blood-borne, whenever an employee has been exposed to blood or other potentially infectious bodily fluids.

The advisory committee could schedule additional meetings or Cal/OSHA could submit its recommendation to the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board, department spokesperson Krisann Chasarik told EDGE. "It is up to the chief of Cal/OSHA to decide and he is currently considering all options."

A Cal/OSHA legal counsel publicly confirmed at the hearings that condom use in porn is already state law and "basically the industry has been out of compliance," AIDS Healthcare Foundation spokesperson Ged Kenslea told EDGE. "So what Cal/OSHA is looking to do is quantify or strengthen that."

The Los Angeles DPH estimates that condoms and other protection are used in less than 20 percent of straight porn. Chasarik reported that since 2004 Cal/OSHA has imposed more than $176,000 in fines against straight and gay porn studios as well as AIM.

The Free Speech Coalition, the adult entertainment industry's trade association, has been fighting Cal/OSHA's efforts to enforce the universal use of condoms in porn videos.

EDGE asked the coalition to review the list Chasarik provided.

Membership Director Joanne Cachapero reported that Evasive Angles, which was fined a total of $85,225 in 2004 and 2006, produces straight porn.

Naughty America/La Touraine is an online company that shoots both straight and gay productions, she said. Fines against the studio in 2007 totaled $43,310.

Gay studios penalized includes Hot Desert Knights ($10,800 in 2007) and Hot House Entertainment ($5,385 in 2008).

Cachapero is not familiar with MVP Entertainment, which was fined $2,700 in 2008.

EDGE approached several AIDS organizations in California and New York City to ask for comments about unprotected sex in the adult entertainment industry for this story, but none was willing to do so.

"We're encouraged that most major gay porn studios have been good citizens by regularly highlighting safer sex and harm reduction in their films," said Bob Rybicki, vice president of programs and policy at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, in a statement included in the Bay Area Reporter's story about Treasure Island Media's sero-discordant porn stars.

"Unfortunately, there's still work to do with smaller players which use unfortunate tactics like these to drive sales with no consideration for the harm they're doing in our community's response to HIV." He did not specify what that "work" was or whether his organization was involved in such "work."

The spokesperson for New York-based Gay Men's Health Charity, the largest such private AIDS service organization in the country, also declined to arrange interviews. "While safer sex is a global issue, this story connects to a California action," she said. (Though some might counter that the films are only made in California; they're seen everywhere.)

And the spokesperson for AIDS Project Los Angeles, which is where most of the porn production and distribution companies are located admitted that "We've seen some of the news on this, but" he added, "it's not something we're able to comment on."