Millions of California voters will be able to decide this November whether porn actors should be required to wear condoms when appearing in an adult film shot in California.
Proposition 60, called Safer Sex in the Adult Film Industry Act by proponents, would also allow state residents to sue adult film producers who fail to comply for thousands of dollars in damages — and take a 25 percent cut of the award.
Adult film performers worry this will create a cottage industry of lawsuits that could expose their identities by making their names and addresses public in legal documents.
“I would totally fear for my life,” said Venus Lux, a transsexual pornographic actress, referring to possible stalkers that the feared lawsuits might encourage. She and others spoke at a press conference against the measure held at the Women’s Building in the Mission District on Tuesday.
“They can open up shop and just start watching porn all day and file a lawsuit,” said Ariel X, another porn actress. “Someone can make a living off of this.”
It’s unclear if that scenario is likely, however, since a resident would only be able to bring suit after filing a complaint with the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health. If the state body fails to investigate within three weeks or decides the complaint has no merit, the resident must hire an attorney, press civil charges and win to get an award.
Rick Taylor, the campaign manager supporting the measure, said it is aimed at promoting worker health but that “if you’re a producer and you break the law, guess what, you get sued.”
“If you’re profiting from it and you’re violating the law, you’re going to have to pay a consequence because you also have a lot of upside,” he added.
Still, Taylor said the initiative was crafted to encourage an effective method of curbing sexually transmitted infections: condom use.
“There is no better way to prevent STDs or other dangerous diseases like HIV than wearing a condom,” he said.
The measure would also mandate licensing for porn producers and require that they pay for and provide testing for venereal diseases to performers.
Currently, performers pay for testing done every 14 days.
One study by the Los Angeles Department of Public Health conducted in 2010 found infection rates for gonorrhea and chlamydia of 28 percent among adult film performers.
Taylor said adult film performers unfairly bear the costs of these tests, which should be borne by producers, but emphasized that the objective was prevention, not detection.
“We end up with young people who find out that they’ve caught a disease,” he said. “That’s not really the best solution.”
Chanel Preston, the chairperson for the industry’s Adult Performer Advocacy Committee, said the proponents of the measure have little idea what regulation works best because they did not work with the industry in crafting the law.
Industry representatives are currently working with Cal-OSHA to develop appropriate regulations, she said, like sets where any performer can demand a condom be used.
Besides, she said, overreach by the state would result in porn production going underground or crossing borders to Florida or Nevada, where regulations are less stringent. That, she said, would be worse for performers.
“It incentivizes people to shoot on the hush rather than follow all the rules and regulations,” she said, adding that she personally has flown to Las Vegas more often as a result of a similar law passed in Los Angeles in 2012 that also required condom use.
There, permits for adult films dropped 90 percent the year after the law passed, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Taylor, for his part, said porn fleeing California was “a ridiculous thing” because so few places allow for adult films — technically only California and New Hampshire. “I just don’t see a porn industry blowing up in New Hampshire.”
Proposition 60 is supported and funded entirely by one organization, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, to the tune of $4,638,000, according to the California Secretary of State.
The opposition, composed mostly of adult film companies, has raised just $527,000, a ninth as much. A poll taken in September shows the public and the money on the same side — 55 percent said they would support the measure, and only 33 percent said they would vote against it.
Still, it has rare bipartisan support — the Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian parties all oppose the measure.
Locally, both Scott Wiener and Jane Kim, city supervisors vying to represent San Francisco at the State Senate who were both at Tuesday’s press conference, say Prop. 60 violates performer privacy.
Despite the bipartisan opposition, California residents seem to favor the measure. A USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll conducted in September found 55 percent would vote for the initiative, while only 33 percent would vote against.
Supervisor Wiener was realistic about the odds. He said voters faced with dozens of ballot measures and “30 or 60 seconds” to look at each may equate condom use with healthy practices — without having looked at the specifics of the law.
“It’s a hard measure to beat,” he said.