AHF: 64,000 people want condoms in porn

…yet when was the last time 64,000 people bought a Wicked movie?

LOS ANGELES—In its continuing effort to become the caretaker of record for the porn industry in Los Angeles, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) today announced it had collected 64,000 signatures endorsing a ballot initiative to make film permits dependent on condom use.

All professional filming in Los Angeles—including porn—requires a City permit. The job of coordinating these permits falls to FilmLA, an organization created in 1995 when the City and County of Los Angeles decided to streamline and privatize their permitting process.

Speaking from the steps of the Van Nuys Civic Center, AHF president Michael Weinstein, flanked by HIV-positive former porn performers Darren James (the 2004 outbreak) and Derrick Burts (2010) and two giant, unaffiliated spermatozoa, told media that the AHF-led For Adult Industry Responsibility (FAIR) had not only beat the December 23rd deadline for filing the petition, but had also acquired 20,000 more signatures than it needed.

This bit of hubris was necessary to divert attention from the fact that neither James nor Burts contracted HIV in the Los Angeles porn industry.

“To date, the City of Los Angeles and the City Council have been unwilling or unable to put forth a motion tying adult film permits to condom use in the productions, or County, to enforce state statutes,” Weinstein said. “This is why we have spearheaded this ballot initiative: so the people—the voters in Los Angeles—may decide on this important health and safety issue affecting adult film performers.”

An accompanying AHF press release also highlighted the extra signatures and early-bird filing, while uttering the following misleading statement:

AHF President Michael Weinstein, together with Darren James and Derrick Burts, two former adult performers who contracted HIV while working in the industry, spoke at length about the lack of safety in the industry and the need for the ballot measure.

The italicized text would suggest that Burts and James got their dose while working on an L.A. porn set. Neither did. James contracted HIV on a fact-finding mission to Brazil and Burts—who refused a lie detector test—either contracted HIV on a gay porn set in Florida or while working as a gay escort.

With its combination of media savvy and attention-seeking behavior that would be the envy of any porn performer, AHF could easily sell its “We just want to help” agenda. Why then does it co-opt and depend so heavily upon unreliable witnesses like opportunistic for-profit anti-porn activist Shelly Lubben and conflicted puppet Burts?

Such behavior casts its stated intentions in a bad light.

When asked by reporters if they, too, carried HIV from one L.A. porn set to another, the Hulk-like sperm were cryptically hostile.

“Sperm go into mouth, or on face,” they said. “Thing don’t come out of Sperm mouth.”

The preliminary language of the City of Los Angeles Safer Sex In The Adult Film Industry Act, which the AHF and FAIR hope to place on the June, 2012 City of Los Angeles ballot, reads as follows:

The proposed ordinance would require any person or entity directly engaged in the creation of adult films who is issued a permit under the authority of the City of Los Angeles (City) for commercial filming of an adult film to maintain engineering and work practice controls, including the provision of and required use of condoms, sufficient to protect employees from exposure to blood or other potentially infectious materials consistent with state law. The proposed ordinance also would require that any film permit issued under the authority of the City of Los Angeles (City) for commercial filming of an adult film be conditioned on the compliance with this requirement and include language regarding the obligation to comply with applicable workplace health and safety regulations. The proposed ordinance also would require the City to charge applicants seeking permits for production of adult films a fee sufficient to pay for periodic inspections. The proposed ordinance would amend the Los Angeles City Municipal Code.

It is hard to argue with Better Safety, but the AHF’s tactics don’t suggest compassion for performers as much as they do a profit motive; the AHF has ties to condom manufacturers as well as testing facilities, and would benefit from both if the adult industry came under its purview.

But mightn’t an organization that misrepresents where performers caught HIV also forge signatures?

Those signatures have yet to be approved by the City; I imagine that at least 2,000 of them are Derrick Burts’s rentboy aliases.

Previously on Porn Valley Observed: John Holmes and a brief history of HIV in the porn industry
See also: AIDS Healthcare Foundation

About Gram the Man 4399 Articles
Gram Ponante is America's Beloved Porn Journalist

6 Comments

  1. I’ll vote for this bill when all 64K have sex with condoms before Election Day ’12 (at least one encounter) and re-sign in the majority

    Actually: never mind

  2. Sometimes I’ll see wildly-intoxicated comments I left here in the dead of night and have a kind of an idea of what I was trying to say.

  3. So, after this is all said and done; are any of the porn studios in Chatsworth, Van Nuys, etc. even under the jurisdiction of the City of Los Angeles? And, if so, what’s to keep them from moving a few miles? It’s not like it will add much to the commute.

    I’ve always wondered why porn-with-condoms ever even emerged; part of the reason for watching porn is to imagine what the actors are feeling. With condoms, the word “nothing” comes to mind. That’s why I’ll never buy (and by ‘buy,’ I mean download) a Wicked movie. Shame, too – they have some pretty actresses. I’d give my non-dominant hand to see a good condomless Jessica Drake scene.

  4. If I may, here are a couple of helpful links to source materials you reference in your excellent essay (you’ll pardon the fact that I wrote both of them):

    First, on Derrick “RentBoy” Burts and the polygraph: http://therealpornwikileaks.com/exclusive-emails-reveal-why-derrick-burts-backed-out-of-a-polygraph-test/

    Second, not only didn’t Burts contract HIV on a California porn set, due to his negligence (or whatever one might call it) he allowed his AIM test to lapse (he had been shooting mostly gay porn which didn’t require a current HIV test) — but he still went ahead and shot at least one gay porn scene immediately upon his return from Florida (when he was at his most infectious). That’s how much he cared about his and his co-stars’ health and safety one year before the AHF “FAIR” ballot initiative. http://www.lukeisback.com/?p=18285

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