Entertainment

Los Angeles to porn industry: No glove, no love

Taylor Bigler Entertainment Editor
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Regulations on the pornography industry in Los Angeles are about to get much tighter.

L.A. city lawmakers voted 11–1 on Wednesday to require porn actors to wear condoms during filming. Each production company will also have to pay a fee to have health inspectors on location, Agence France-Presse reported. Porn studios would be required to provide the condoms.

The move comes after the AIDS Healthcare Foundation gathered enough signatures to take the ordinance to the city council.

AHF has long campaigned for the requirement on porn sets. Last year, one production shut down filming after an actor contracted HIV.

“This long struggle to move us to a place of making Los Angeles a safe place to make adult films has taken a huge leap forward today,” said AHF President Michael Weinstein.

Requiring safe sex might seem like a good idea, but the Free Speech Coalition, the porn industry’s trade association, said that the government’s intrusion into skin flicks will be bad for business.

Businessweek reported that Diane Duke, the coalition’s executive director, said there hasn’t been a case of a sexually transmitted disease in the industry in five years.

Actor Derrick Burts said that he contracted HIV after working in gay and straight films in 2010, but Duke refuted that claim. Burts said the vote was a step in the right direction.

The ordinance must be finalized next week with a second vote before it goes into effect.

Nina Hartley, a registered nurse who started her career as a porn actress back in 1984, said requiring condoms could backfire because adult film stars can engage in sexual intercourse that lasts as long as 30 or 60 minutes.

Wearing a condom for that long, she said, would lead to chafing, open sores and a greater risk of disease transmission.

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