It might have been worth a good laugh, but news that Simi Valley, Calif., was soon going to require its police officers to watch porn — to ensure compliance with a new city condom mandate — simply isn’t true, according to local authorities.
That job now goes to the city’s director of administrative services.
On Wednesday, The Huffington Post and other online publications jumped on a local CBS affiliate’s report that a new city mandate requiring porn actors to use condoms would force producers to “submit unedited copies of their adult films to the Simi Valley Police Department for review.”
A Simi Valley police spokesman, however, told The Daily Caller, “No, no that’s completely false.”
Simi Valley Mayor Bob Huber told TheDC that the press reports were examples of “shoddy journalism.”
Huber said that the law’s first draft was written after Los Angeles passed a law mandating condom use on set. An Associated Press article at the time quoted “a lobbyist for the porn industry, saying they were unhappy with it, and saying they were going to move out of Los Angeles and into Simi Valley — naming the city,” Huber said.
Amid concern about an influx of porn producers, the city council considered its own condom requirement. Huber said the intent was twofold: “for health and safety” purposes and because “we don’t want them here.”
“The original provision,” explained Huber, “did say that the police department would require a medical observer to be present, and then send videos over to the police department for compliance.” An on-set nurse or physician would be required to observe production and sign an affidavit affirming that condoms were used.
But, Huber said, before the law was voted on,”I started doing more homework,” and he came to realize: “Why would the porn people want to move out of L.A.? If they don’t enforce it, why are they going to move?”
The Simi Valley condom law, which will take effect next month, now requires the city’s director of administrative services “to go in, inspect and get a copy” of videos if condom-less sex is suspected, Huber said.
Porn producers aren’t necessarily alarmed by the new laws in southern California.
Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, for one, says that condom regulations have no real effect on his business.
“It’s a non-issue for us,” Flynt told TheDC. “If any of the cities want to pass those stupid laws we’ll just shoot in the desert or go into Mexico. We’re not playing that game.”
Supporters of the condom laws “have their own agendas, which make no sense at all,” Flynt added. “People just don’t want to buy the videos, there’s no market for them.”
