The update is that basically it’s a political, emotionally-charged, agenda-filled nightmare. The short of it is that the clinic that does the majority of STD/STI testing for the mainstream porn industry, AIM, has had the clinic partially shuttered by the LA County Health Department due to an inconsistency in their clinic application. The inconsistency is minor; where AIM was supposed to write the clinic name out without abbreviation, they did not and so it read “AIM” in all the places the form should have read “Adult Industry Medical”. It is the kind of thing that could either be stupid bureaucracy, like making sure you don’t abbreviate your middle name on your passport application – or it is the kind of thing that is little more than an opportunity for someone who is looking for an excuse to make things difficult.
At any rate, the clinic is partially closed; people who need to get tested can go to any one of AIM’s draw stations around the state and still go get their results at the Sherman Oaks clinic.
It’s really disturbing to see The AIDS Healthcare Foundation celebrating AIM’s difficulties. This organization has been the loudest critic of the porn industry, most especially in regard to testing, condom use and the self-regulation the porn communities have put in place around testing and performing. People are split on what porn should and should not be doing to ensure the safety of the performers, and it’s important to note that gay porn has very different practices around safer sex and the business of porn.
As a sex educator who has done in the field teaching and client counseling for almost ten years, you should know that I do, and do not agree with each industry on a variety of issues in this matter. I also have been a volunteer for a variety of street-side AIDS organizations since I was a teen on the streets.
But you should also know that The AIDS Healthcare Foundation has an agenda, which I found out about when I wrote the SF Chronicle article Porn Workplace Safety back in August 2009. I wrote,
On July 16, down in Southern California, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation filed a lawsuit seeking a writ of mandate to compel the LA County Health Department to “combat an acknowledged epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases stemming from production of hardcore pornography in Los Angeles County.” When the County responded last week and didn’t crack down on porn studios for not requiring condoms in what both parties acknowledge as “less than .01%” of LA County’s population,” AHF complained to mommy instead of daddy, filing separate complaints with Cal/OSHA (our state’s Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Occupational Safety and Health.)
Right before the HIV organization (purveyors of the “Out of the Closet” thrift store chain) took their issues to California’s biggest HR department, the LA Times reported that the AHF was indeed going to do so. They quoted AHF at length — in addition to offering up the curious alliance in this fight between AHF and extremist organization Pink Cross. Pink Cross belongs to born-again Christian and vocal anti-porn pundit Shelly Lubben — who was also quoted in the LA Times piece.
As AIDS Healthcare is actively working with Shelly Lubben and Pink Cross, who lobbies politicians to make porn illegal and has a very vocal Christian agenda, we need to look at the mingling of HIV/AIDS activism and Christian conservative anti-porn extremism very cautiously. In my opinion, this is a dangerous combination.
In the meantime, the performer at the center of the most recent HIV quarantine in the adult industry has outed himself – and AIDS Healthcare is involved. That is another mess.
This week, in the LA Times article “HIV-positive porn performer speaks out” the man who was anonymously quarantined after contracting HIV, came out to reporters (after going to the AIDS Healthcare Foundation). The story is interesting and it doesn’t portray AIM in a good light; but it’s also unbalanced journalism – the first thing I noticed as a writer is that the LAT did not get comment for the piece from one of the article’s main subjects, AIM itself. This is not quality journalism, friends.
Regardless, it’s a scary mess. Safer sex inconsistencies *anywhere* can be deadly; the whole thing gets worse when we see this dude performed in both industries – which a small number of guys do. Local San Francisco blog SFist cracked the issue open even wider yesterday when they got comment from gay porn studios – you see, LA is to straight porn as SF is to gay (and BDSM) porn.
The must-read in all of this right now is Two Sides of the HIV-in-Porn Debate, One from an L.A. Porn Star, One from a Local Gay Producer. Don’t skip the comments, either.
One thing is for sure: no matter how you feel about condoms and testing in porn – if AIM were to be closed completely, we would have a health epidemic on our hands that would become both epic and unnecessarily tragic.
Violet, you are absolutely correct when you write that AHF has an agenda — it does, and it has nothing to do with public health.
AHF is advancing the position that condom-only pornography would keep everyone safer — yet the alleged “victim” who Weinstein and Co. have trotted out like the prize pig at the county fair claims to have become infected on a condom-only set!
For those not familiar with the tactics of AHF, I recommend the following brief video clips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9MOWF94_II&hd=1
and, from the forthcoming video expose by Julie Meadows and myself (on Shelley Lubben and Pink Cross Foundation):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZmLv1w4RZg&hd=1
Just make condom use in porn mandatory already. Sexually transmitted diseases are an occupational hazard in the porn industry and it’s CalOSHA’s job to protect workers from occupational hazards.
I know no one is forcing them to do porn, but no one is forced to be a welder, either, and it is illegal to require a welder to work without a mask. Other industries have to give their workers adequate protection from occupational hazards. Why should the porn industry be any different?
The thing that a lot of people don’t get about this controversy is how extreme the kind of changes CalOSHA and LA County Public Health want to legislate. Basically, there trying to impose medical worker regulations on porn performers, which would legislate condoms not only for penile/anal and penile/vaginal sex, but *all* oral sex, and possibly including the demand that gloves and goggles be worn at all times!
I notice that the norms of the gay industry (excluding the fringe bareback genre) are held up by many as a model, but a quick look at actual gay porn will show what a gap exists between what most reasonable people think of as safer sex and what AHF, CalOSHA, and the rest are trying to legislate. I just went over to AEBN and had a look at a few scenes directed by none other than Chi Chi LaRue. From what I saw, condoms were used consistently for anal penetration, but they were not used in oral sex and rimming scenes at all. (Though I will note that cum shots seem to be almost always external, and cum-in-mouth scenes seem to be mostly restricted to performers consuming their own.)
I trust that LaRue is somebody who’s making a point of having solid safer sex practices in his movies, yet even what he’s doing would not meet the rigid criteria that CalOSHA says are the established rules that porn sets must follow.
I’ll also note that one of the participants in the CalOSHA porn hearings in LA earlier this year was Girlfriends Films, an all-girl production company. Their afraid they’re going to have the use of dental dams imposed on them, something that’s effectively going to aesthetically kill F/F porn.
Basically, we have a situation where safer sex needs to become more the norm, especially in straight porn. However, the only way that this is being pushed is by public health agencies with an unworkable set of regulations and no ability to enforce them, aided by organizations that either have an agenda of making porn illegal (eg, Pink Cross) or grandstanding and winning turf wars (eg, AIDS Healthcare Foundation).
Meanwhile, the media (including a lot of the sex-positive media, unfortunately) dumbs the whole issue down to the greedy porn industry versus the public health good guys.
The whole situation sucks, really, and not in a good way.
You know, I’ve had you on twitter for a while and have let links to your artivles come and go by, and I clicked on this one, and had to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it, but also that I should be kicked for not reading these sooner! :)
Well said. It is indeed a mess, and your final statement sums up the worst possible outcome: if the current panicked dialogue results in closure of all of AIM’s facilities while California porn companies and performers are in the middle of during business as usual, there will be a tragic, unnecessary health crisis.
Thanks. I had seen mention of the ‘AIM shutdown’ on Twitter, and this gives me a good understanding of the events and groups involved. It sounds like AIM might not be the best, or complete solution to straight porn’s safer sex issues, but it’s clear they are much worse off without them.