I've been watching the story about the HIV outbreak in the California porn industry unfold for the last two weeks, and I'm wondering if it will have a long-lasting effect on the industry.
In the wake of two confirmed HIV transmissions, with at least 50 more performers placed on a "quarantine" list, the state of California is now considering making condom usage in porn films mandatory--an idea some major porn producers are protesting vociferously. They point out that considering the number of people who fuck each other without condoms in the mainstream porn industry, the number of known HIV cases is relatively small. The Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation has tested 900 to 1,200 performers monthly, and reports only 11 cases in the last 7 years, out of hundreds of thousands of sexual contacts. The no-condoms porn producers--including porn heavyweight Larry Flynt --feel the current system of requiring the performers to get monthly HIV tests is enough protection.
I have a rather schizophrenic reaction to the idea of state-enforced condom usage in porn films. My cool-headed intellectual side says: No, the state should not be involved in regulating someone's safer-sex choices. Well-intentioned attempts to protect people from themselves invariably lead to oppressive, intrusive bureaucracy. If condom usage is forced on an unwilling industry, it will create an underground cartel of no-condoms productions, where desperate performers will perform without even the imperfect safety net of the current testing system.
But, there are still 11 people who now have a very serious disease because the porn industry won't use protection. So my emotional response is: Hell yes, make them wear condoms. This is not about private individuals in their bedrooms, this is about an industry. I don't care if they don't like it, and if it lops a few dollars off Larry Flynt's annual income, too bad. Industry types will fuss for a while, but they'll get used to it and it'll come to seem as normal as seat belts and No Smoking signs. Other businesses are required to protect their workers against known safety hazards--why should porn be an exception?
Porn insiders say: Performers have gotten HIV before, and while there was a brief flap about it, nothing changed then, and nothing's going to change now, either. That's not completely true, though. For Darren James and Lara Roxx, the two porn performers who have come up HIV-positive, everything has changed.
