Adult film industry bosses suffered a new setback this week in their campaign to overturn state health rules that require them to provide condoms to their adult film performers and ensure that the performers wear them in sexually explicit scenes.
On Tuesday, separate reports by the staffs of the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board were made public. Both reached the same conclusion: Condom use is essential to protecting adult film workers from sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
The reports responded to a petition from Eric Paul Leue, the leader of a trade group that represents adult film producers. The group asked Cal/OSHA to amend its regulations to remove the condom requirement rule.
“These staff reports are a tremendous victory for the cause of protecting workers’ health and safety,” said Los Angeles political consultant Rick Taylor. “The adult film industry wants to kill the condom use rule. Cooler heads and science have prevailed. California’s top worker safety experts have reaffirmed that condoms are the gold standard for protecting performers.
“These new reports again prove that the adult film industry’s producers are on the wrong side of medical science,” said Mr. Taylor. “They are like climate change deniers. They are wrong. And all the science proves them wrong.”
The industry’s relentless campaign to gut existing condom-use regulations and its refusal to obey these same rules during filming also emphasizes the importance of voter passage of Prop. 60, said Taylor, chief strategist for the proposition’s campaign.
Prop. 60 is a measure on November ballot in California that would provide state health officials with additional tools to enforce the rule on condom use.
“The industry’s record of resistance to condom use is so blatant and persistent that it’s obvious we need Prop. 60 to fight back,” said Mr. Taylor.
The condom requirement has been in effect since 1992. But 97 percent of the performers in adult films do not wear condoms, studies have shown.
Producers frequently bully and blackball performers who seek to use condoms, say critics, who also claim that the result of widespread non-compliance is that the incidence of STDs among adult film industry performers is at epidemic proportions, according to recent studies.
“I never saw so much chlamydia and gonorrhea in a population,” Dr. Peter Kerndt, former head of the Los Angeles County STD Program, told the Los Angeles Times in March.
Prop. 60 will close loopholes in Cal/OSHA regulations that agency officials say seriously interfere with their efforts to protect adult film performers.
Specifically, Prop. 60 will extend the window of time (the statute of limitations) authorities will have to file a complaint against adult film industry producers violating the condom rule. In addition, Prop. 60 will enable health officials to seek penalties not only against the producers of condom-less film productions but also against the agents and distributors of such films.
Mr. Schwada may be contacted at john.schwada@gmail.com
