Condoms NOW Required for LosAngeles Porn Actors

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Actors in many of the adult films made in the nation’s porn capital must use condoms under a law that took effect Monday, but the prophylactic police aren’t yet on the case.

How they will enforce such a regulation once they do begin enforcement is anyone’s guess.

In Los Angeles, where an estimated 90 percent of the country’s porn films are made, city officials and industry leaders are trying to settle on a way to ensure that there’s more safe sex on the set. Some say health care professionals should be present during a shoot to make sure actors use condoms.

"Today really is a milestone in the advance of health and safety for these adult filmmakers," said Ged Kenslea, spokesman for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which lobbied for years for the measure.
When the City Council passed the law in January, it gave police, the city attorney, the porn industry and others six months to recommend the best way to enforce the measure. They have roughly four months left.
Until then, it’s unclear whether police or health officials will start showing up at shoots. On Monday, city attorney spokesman Frank Mateljan said he didn’t know the status of enforcement.

To shoot a movie outside of a studio, the law requires a film permit and condom use. The larger porn companies that make the movies on studio soundstages don’t need permits and therefore are exempt from the condom requirement. The companies, however, would need one if they went to a house in a neighborhood to shoot a scene.

The question is whether smaller companies, in which only a handful of people show up at a house, usually in the city’s San Fernando Valley, quickly make a movie in a day or two and then move on, will pay any attention.

The head of one of the industry’s largest filmmakers said he hadn’t been approached about working out how the ordinance would work and how the city would deal with violators.

"We assumed we would be approached but we have not been," said Steven Hirsch, chief executive and co-founder of the Vivid Entertainment Group. Hirsch said about 90 percent of Vivid’s film shoots are conducted either in its own studio or outside the city.

But he quickly added that his company would immediately begin complying with the law and require that actors use condoms on any film shoots taking place outside a studio in Los Angeles.

Kenslea, the spokesman for the AIDS health care group, said he’s heard that, although as many 50,000 porn films a year are made in Los Angeles, only about 200 permits a month are issued by the city to film them.

"Just because they don’t take out permits does not mean there shouldn’t be regulations," he said.

Industry officials say the law isn’t needed and that their audiences find the use of condoms a turnoff. They said the industry’s own requirement, that actors be tested for sexually transmitted diseases every 30 days, is sufficient. Hirsch and others have pointed out that there hasn’t been a case of HIV linked directly to the making of a porn film since 2004.

Kenslea and other advocates of using condoms say there have been nine reported cases of HIV involving porn actors since 2004. They said those cases highlight the ever-present risk that someone can acquire the virus in their private life and then infect others on set.

When it comes to enforcement, Kenslea said, his organization is pushing for the city to use health care professionals, perhaps from a nursing agency, to conduct spot checks. The cost of the inspections would be paid out of fees the filmmakers would pay when applying for permits. The foundation has proposed a fee of $50 to $75.

Filmmakers who are caught violating the requirement would be refused future permits.

Meanwhile, his group is trying to get a measure on the November ballot that would require that Los Angeles County adopt a similar but tougher measure mandating a health permit similar to the ones for nail and hair salons. Such an ordinance would cover more than 80 other cities that fall within the county.

Some have threatened to leave the city, taking what they say is an $8 billion-a-year business.
Kenslea dismissed that as a "hollow threat."

"The industry is too entrenched here," he said, noting that Vivid, Larry Flynt and other prominent filmmakers are all based in the city and so are the industry’s actors and behind-the-scenes people.

If any do leave, he said, his organization will follow them and push for similar legislation in those new communities. In the case of one city, his organization won’t have to.

The mayor of Simi Valley, located about a 10-minute drive from the west San Fernando Valley, where most of the films are made, has proposed an even tougher ordinance than the one in Los Angeles. It is expected to come up for a vote of the City Council within a few weeks.

That law would require that a licensed health care professional be on any porn set to ensure condoms are being used and that the filmmakers turn over an unedited copy of their movie so authorities can see if condoms were used.

"The primary purpose here is it’s a health and safety issue. And secondarily, we don’t want them here," Mayor Bob Huber said of his city of 125,000 residents. "This is a family-oriented community and we don’t want them setting up their studios in Simi Valley."

LOS ANGELES: City Council Adopts Condom Requirement For Porn

The Los Angeles City Council has approved a measure requiring the use of condoms in all porn productions. Via press release from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation:

In an historic move, during today’s City Council meeting, the Los Angeles City Council adopted the proposed ordinance, ‘City of Los Angeles Safer Sex In The Adult Film Industry Act,’ a ballot initiative that has recently qualified to be placed on the June 5, 2012 election despite legal action by Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich to block the measure from appearing before City voters on the ballot. The ballot measure would condition the issuance of City film permits to adult film producers to condom use in the subsequent adult films shot and produced in Los Angeles.

Today's news probably makes the ballot measure moot. The LA City Attorney had filed a suit against the referendum, arguing that the state is the supreme authority in workplace safety.

Will L.A. Be The First City To Mandate Condom Usage In Porn?

A measure that would require actors in porn films to wear condoms qualified to be on the ballot next June in L.A., the adult-film capital of the United States.

The AIDS Healthcare Center collected around 71,000 signatures for the measure, almost double the 41,000 needed to get on the ballot. Although condom usage is fairly widespread in mainstream gay porn, most major straight-porn companies don’t use them consistently.

Rising tensions about AIDS in the porn industry have reached a fever pitch in the past year: An AIDS scare based on a positive result from star Derrick Burts put a halt on the entire U.S. porn industry this August. Just a few weeks ago, the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, a testing center partially funded by the porn industry, was shut down after being criticized by Burts and called a “sham clinic” by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

The ballot initiative has its detractors: L.A. City Atty. Carmen Trutanich says she believes the issue is for the state to regulate, not the city or county, and has filed papers saying so

Work-Of-Art Porn Star Francois Sagat Offers Master Class At NYC Museum

First Terry Richardson chose Francois Sagat to be the subject of “activist art” by putting him in a American-flag-striped unitard and inking “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” on the gay-porn god’s shapely butt cheeks. Now that Sagat singlehandedly secured the repeal of the homophobic military measure, it’s time for the charismatic Frenchman with the surprisingly untrashy scalp tattoo to take on the world of high art.

That’s right, the 32-year-old is heading up “Another Man: A Master Class with François Sagat,” at the Museum of Arts and Design  November 19, part of a three-day retrospective that includes the U.S. premiere of a French television documentary on him. (Check out the bilingual trailer below.)


While it’s true Sagat has ventured into art territory before—with films like Bruce LaBruce’s LA Zombie and Christophe Honore’s Homme au bain, Man at Bath (both of which will screen at the museum)—it doesn’t seem like he’s quite ready to ascend to the pedestal of being a living, pornographic work of art: He tells Out, “I’m still overwhelmed that I’ve been invited.”

Best of all, perhaps, is that Sagat will be instructing attendees on… the art of being Sagat.

“I’m basically supposed to speak about my career and about porn, generally speaking, and porn through my life,” he says. “I’ll speak, maybe, about my childhood and all of my inspirations.”

If we don’t understand the subject matter, can we sign up for a private tutoring session?

HIV-Positive LA Porn Actor Calls for Condom Use

An adult film actor who tested positive for HIV says he now wishes he had known more about the risks of contracting sexually transmitted diseases in the industry and is calling for mandatory condom use in porn films.

Derrick Burts, 24, identified himself to the Los Angeles Times as the performer who tested positive at the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation in Sherman Oaks in October. He had previously been known as Patient Zeta.

Burts, who performed in straight films as Cameron Reid and gay films as Derek Chambers, described the panicked call he got from clinic staff on Oct. 9 about the infection that sent fears through California’s adult industry.

Clinic staff told him they wanted to perform a follow-up test and begin notifying performers he had worked with since his last negative test result Sept. 3. He was told those performers would be placed on a quarantine list and also would be tested.

When Burts returned to the clinic Oct. 23 to review the second test results, he said he was told that the clinic had traced his HIV infection to someone he had performed a scene with, someone they described as a "known positive." The clinic would not identify the performer because of patient confidentiality

Burts said he believed he may have contracted the disease during a gay porn shoot in Florida.
Despite Burts’ account of what he was told, clinic officials released a statement last month that said "Patient Zeta acquired the virus through private, personal activity."
"That’s completely false," Burts told the Times. "There is no possible way. The only person I had sex with in my personal life was my girlfriend."

She tested negative, he said.

An e-mail to the Adult Industry Healthcare Foundation seeking comment late Tuesday was not immediately returned.

Burts said the clinic promised to put him in touch with a doctor affiliated with the clinic and promised to arrange for his follow-up care. But he said no one called him back and when he contacted the clinic, he received no response for two months.

In frustration, Burts said he went to an AIDS Healthcare Foundation center in Los Angeles on Nov. 24 but didn’t identify himself as Patient Zeta.

Burts said he was pleased with the care he received there and contacted the head of the organization last week and identified himself as Patient Zeta. He said he wanted to speak out in favor of enforcing mandatory condom use in porn productions.

The Times reported the foundation had scheduled a news conference with Burt on Wednesday, Dec. 8.
Burts grew up in Whittier and Hemet and graduated from Hemet High School and a hotel management school in Florida, according to the Times. He worked as a hotel manager and cruise ship magician before becoming a performer in the lucrative porn industry.

"Making $10,000 or $15,000 for porn isn’t worth your life," he told the Times. "Performers need to be educated."