After almost a year of urging the adult-film industry to require actors to wear condoms during sex scenes, state and county officials say the recent HIV infection of two porn stars has given them the leverage they need to force change.
State and Los Angeles County health officials said Monday they believed existing regulations gave them the authority to require adult-film actors to use condoms, and the state Division of Occupational Health and Safety plans to begin inspections this week, marking the first time Cal/OSHA has investigated the adult-film industry.
Industry lawyers dispute the agency's legal authority, and some industry officials say pornographic movie production would move out of state if condom use were required.
Although a few California adult-film producers have voluntarily switched to condom-only productions, the majority of producers and distributors have balked at doing so. It is conventional wisdom within the multibillion-dollar industry -- which employs more than 6,000 people in California, including about 1,200 performers -- that using a condom doesn't pay.
"It's market forces," said Mark Kulkis, president of Kick Ass Pictures, a production company based in downtown Los Angeles that specializes in fetish films. "The bottom line is, customers don't like [to see] condoms."
He likened adult-film performers to Hollywood stuntmen and women.
"When you see an action movie and you see the hero jumping out the window, you don't want to see the wires holding him up," Kulkis said. "Nobody wants to see condoms. It's a fantasy."
Until last week's HIV outbreak, which spurred a temporary industrywide production shutdown, only two of 200 adult-film production companies in Southern California were condoms-only, industry insiders said. About 17% of the performers use a condom regularly.
David Joseph, president of Red Light District, a Chatsworth-based production company that specializes in hard-core, "gonzo" films that do not use condoms, was one of several representatives of production companies who said that if the state required condom use by sex actors, they would leave California. Other industry insiders predicted that filming would move underground.
But state and county officials say condom use is an important health and workplace issue.
"You couldn't imagine a construction company sending a person to a work site without a hard hat, and nor should we think of someone in an adult-film industry production company working without a condom," said Peter Kerndt, director of the sexually transmitted disease program for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. "I look at this strictly as an employer-employee issue."
Kerndt said he expected resistance to mandatory condom use and agreed that some adult filmmakers would leave the state. But he cites a previous success in setting standards for the industry, pointing out that producers rigorously screen out underage actors because of the threat of closure, fines and incarceration.
"Some of the big players won't move" out of state, he said. "What we've learned is that, if you can set the standard with those folks, you can generally make an enormous amount of progress," Kerndt said.
Monday afternoon, Kerndt, on behalf of the county, asked Cal/OSHA to investigate the production companies where Darren James and Lara Roxx, the two infected actors, have worked.
Until now, the agency has spent much of its time monitoring the construction and agricultural industries, in which the majority of workplace deaths and injuries occur, said Cal/OSHA spokeswoman Susan Gard.
Also, Gard said, Cal/OSHA generally responds to complaints about workplace hazards, and so far no adult-film actors have filed complaints.
But now that the agency is getting involved, it has two main regulations that would apply to the porn industry: illness-prevention program requirements and the blood-borne pathogen standard, Gard said.
The illness-prevention program requires employers to have written policies on reducing workplace hazards. The blood-borne pathogen standard requires use of universal precautions by people who come in contact with semen, vaginal secretions, blood and other bodily fluids that may transmit diseases.
"If you think of nursing or the healthcare industry, they have to use universal precautions," Gard said. "That means you always use a rubber glove when they draw blood."
In addition to a condoms-only policy, enforcement of existing state regulations would require porn producers to bear the costs of any testing, vaccinations and medical care associated with their employees in the workplace, Kerndt said. It would also mean an end to practices in some pornographic movies that involve contact with semen.
