When Measure B was approved in 2012, making mandatory the use of condoms for vaginal and anal sex scenes filmed in the Los Angeles County, many discontent voices were heard throughout the adult industry. A lot of them argued that the condom requirement challenged their right to freedom of expression under the First Amendment of the Constitution.
A three-judge panel on a U.S. federal appeals court upheld Measure B’s decision this week, guaranteeing that any porn shot in the L.A. county will have to stick to their mandated condom use.
“While this intermediate decision allows that condoms may be mandated, it doesn’t meant they should be,” Diane Duke, CEO of the Free Speech Coalition, said in a statement to the press. “We have spent the last two years fighting for the right of adult performers to make their own decisions about their bodies, and against the stigma against adult-film performers embodied in the statute. Rather than protect adult performers, a condom mandate pushes a legal industry underground where workers are less safe. This is terrible policy that has been defeated in other legislative venues.”
Safety is always a concern in pornography, especially when every few months or so there seems to be another HIV scare and its subsequent moratorium. Adult actor Rod Daily, who last year tested positive for HIV, called out the whole industry’s pressure to perform or be replaced. “Condoms in porn is not really that crazy a thing,” Daily told Fox News at the time. “Ultimately, it’s just a big industry, and their main concern is money. If they do care that much about the performers, they would use condoms.”
But the reality is that performers are always replaceable. There will always be another actor ready to do it. The other reality is that most of us prefer unprotected sex in our porn. We’ve talked about it before, and even if we’re 100% pro-condoms in our personal life, for a lot of us, their use in the adult industry reminds us of a reality we were trying to escape in the first place by watching porn.
Most of the adult industry in America — which still banks in an estimated $9 billion to $13 billion a year — is based in the Los Angeles area, but that’s starting to change every day. Las Vegas is becoming a more welcoming destination for porn producers, and the business might be slowly finding a new permanent home.
“Vegas is looking more and more attractive as time goes by,” Kink.com founder Peter Acworth told the Las Vegas Sun back in September. “I think that a lot of companies are doing what we’re doing. They’re setting up satellite offices and getting their feet wet with Vegas as a potential place to shoot. The move is happening, but quietly. Nobody wants to be Nevada’s test case. They don’t want a target on their back.”
In the end, you can’t really put a muzzle on the adult industry — nor any other latex-based restriction. Porn moves the world, and it’ll do what it has to in order to survive.
