Condoms Might Be Mandatory In LA Porn

Lawmakers  in Los Angeles want condoms to be mandatory in porn.

This is an issue that has been on the tables on and off for years. It recently came back on when a porn star was diagnosed with HIV.

“Last week, city lawmakers voted unanimously to draft an ordinance that would require condoms to be used on the set of every pornographic movie made [t]here.”

Parts of the industry against condoms argue that regular testing is good enough and that they have been successfully policing themselves. There have only been five HIV infections since 2004 and in 2004 there was an “outbreak” of HIV.

“This has been working for years,” said Steven Hirsch, founder of Vivid Entertainment. “If we saw people getting sick, we would go to mandatory condoms.”

But what they need to realize is that HIV is not the only sexually transmitted infection (STI). There’s chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, hepatitis, herpes, warts, non-specific urethritis, pubic lice, lymphogranuloma venereum, molluscum contagiosum, scabies, trichomoniasis, and probably more.

Yes, HIV might be the scariest because people are stuck with it for the rest of their lives, but others are also for life and most of the other STIs are far more highly infectious and can have serious consequences if they are not found and treated.

Chlamydia and gonorrhea can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility. Syphilis attacks a person’s nervous system and can affect brain, heart, and eyesight. Hepatitis C is not cleared in up to 80% and becomes chronic and the treatment is a horrible process to go through.

As you can see, sex can be an ugly, painful, and disabling thing to do. But it doesn’t have to be if a person knows how to protect themself. The problem in porn is that people do know how to protect themselves but choose not to. If a person has to decide what’s more important to them, as one porn star said, “you do worry about the risk, but any girl desperate for money, like I was, is still going to do it.”

Obviously, I think condoms are a good idea. I also think that if the porn industry could get on board with this they would have a much happier group of people working for them. They would also have an influence on the people who watch porn and possibly even, in some way, help reduce the transmissions of STIs in the general population.

I hope this debate is finally resolved – condoms are a good thing.

Contact the author here: mack@morningquickie.com