Breaking news out of the west coast, especially if you like looking at naked people on the internet: the LA Times is reporting that a judge ruled on Friday on the Los Angeles County Safer Sex in the Adult Film Industry Act. The judge has declared that the new law does not violate a pornographic video star’s constitutional rights by requiring them to wear protection.
Because so many individuals within the adult film industry are subjecting themselves to unnecessary risks, particularly in relation to sexually transmitted diseases, voters in Los Angeles recently passed a law that required porn actors to wear condoms during shooting. The law was passed in November, but it took mere days for porn producers to begin “leaving L.A. County in droves.”
The president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Michael Weinstein, called the judge’s ruling a “tremendous victory, one that will go a long way to safeguard the health and safety of those adult performers working in the industry.” The AIDS Healthcare Foundation was among the bill’s 5 sponsors.
When the law was being implemented in January, production companies VIvid Entertainment, Califa Productions, and porn producers Kayden Kross and Logan Pierce filed suit to halt the process. Their suit said that “the exercise of 1st Amendment freedoms cannot be limited by referendum [and, as the new law stands, it is] an unconstitutional prior restraint upon protected expression.”
The porn producers’ attorney, Paul Cambria Jr., initially argued argued that the measure would affect the audience’s suspension of disbelief: “Assume that we’re filming an adult movie and it was taking place in the swashbuckler times. All of a sudden, Captain Jack slips on a condom… Obviously, that would basically destroy the movie, because it would be fake. Obviously, people would know that couldn’t have happened then,” he said, as if the greatest worry a porn producer could face is the plausibility of their screen story.
Weinstein’s counter is a bit more matter-of-fact: “This is not a free speech issue. This is a workplace safety issue… If they want to digitally remove a condom [from the final movie] there’s no issue.”
The judge’s ruling cited the evidence presented by both parties, in particular the lack of health or medical evidence on the side of the porn producers. “Plaintiffs [the porn industry] by contrast, have presented evidence from individuals in the adult film industry, but not in the public health or medical profession, who claim testing is so effective and universal that condoms are unnecessary,” his ruling read.