{"id":268384,"date":"2010-02-02T18:03:01","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T23:03:01","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c630a53ef012877553641970c"},"modified":"2010-02-02T19:02:19","modified_gmt":"2010-02-03T00:02:19","slug":"l-a-county-cant-require-condoms-for-porn-actors-officials-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/268384","title":{"rendered":"L.A. County can’t require condoms for porn actors, officials say"},"content":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles County officials Tuesday rebuffed demands from an AIDS activist group that the county\u2019s public health officials take immediate action to require performers in porn films to wear condoms.<\/p>\n

County officials said the California Legislature would need to approve legislation that would require condom use for pornography shoots. They said it would be difficult to try to regulate the porn industry through the county’s Public Health Department.<\/p>\n

"It is very, very difficult to implement. There are roughly 200 production companies with about…1,200 actors,\u201d said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, the county’s public health chief. \u201cAll you need is a room and a camera and a bed, basically, to do this kind of shoot, and we have no ability to police this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fielding said that it would be difficult for public health officials to prove if the movies were produced in L.A. County or elsewhere, as producers often do not apply for filming licenses. In a memo to supervisors on Sept. 17<\/a>, health officials warned such an effort would be costly, as the public health department would need to identify filming sites and monitor compliance, which would require significant staff time.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

"We worked closely with county counsel trying to see if there\u2019s some other way that we could effectively do this under existing authority, and what we\u2019ve come up with is, basically, we\u2019re unlikely to to have an effective approach to prevent them from acquiring preventable STDs,\u201d Fielding said Tuesday. \u201cIt\u2019s very disturbing to come to that conclusion, but we also have to be realistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, whose district includes the San Fernando Valley, agreed that adult film performers are vulnerable to sexually-transmitted diseases and said they deserve some kind of protection through the law. But he said the state\u2019s legislators would need to act.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the only answer to this at the end of the day is a statewide approach to this, which would also empower law enforcement, and you run sting operations,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cAll you\u2019ve got to do is make one or two arrests and the rest of the…industry will understand pretty quickly that there\u2019s a risk." <\/p>\n

Yaroslavsky said, however, that not a single California lawmaker has been willing to sponsor such legislation.<\/p>\n

Fielding\u2019s department testified to California lawmakers in 2004 asking the Legislature to approve a law that would regulate the adult film industry; require condom use during filming; implement STD screening requirements, which would be paid by the industry; and have film companies pay for the local cost of monitoring compliance.<\/p>\n

Brian Chase, assistant general counsel for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, accused the county of having \u201cdone nothing\u201d to protect adult film performers during Tuesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n

In December, an L.A. County Superior Court judge dismissed the foundation\u2019s petition<\/a> seeking a court order to compel county health officials to require condom use on porn sets or take other reasonable steps to stem the spread of disease. The court ruled that the county has broad discretion in how it oversees public health.<\/p>\n

— Rong-Gong Lin II at the L.A. County Hall of Administration<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles County officials Tuesday rebuffed demands from an AIDS activist group that the county\u2019s public health officials take immediate action to require performers in porn films to wear condoms. County officials said the California Legislature would need to approve legislation that would require condom use for pornography shoots. They said it would be difficult […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4765,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-268384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4765"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}