California Group Wants Porn Actors to Set Example for Young People

Alongside candidates for president, congress and the senate, Californians next year will also likely be voting on something a little more steamy: Whether porn actors should be required to wear condoms during sex scenes.

The measure is eligible for the November 2016 ballot, the California secretary of state’s office announced Wednesday, and it‘s likely to be on the ballot next November.

If passed, it would require “performers in adult films to use condoms during filming of sexual intercourse” and “producers of adult films to pay for performer vaccinations, testing, and medical examinations related to sexually transmitted infections.”

The measure’s proponents say it will set a good example for teenagers to practice safe sex, but others say it would result in harassment of porn actors and would harm the state’s economy.

“The No. 1 way that young people learn about sex in this day and age is pornography on the internet,” Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and proponent of the measure, told the Associated Press.

“In porn, real people are having real sex. They’re transmitting actual diseases, and the audience knows it. It’s not like a fictional Hollywood film.”

The measure has massive statewide support, Weinstein said, and is expected to pass in a landslide.

“We’ve taken polls that show, statewide, 71 percent support,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “We’re very confident that we will be successful on election day.”

The measure allows for the state, actors or just your average citizen to report violations and even sue offenders.

Opponents of the law say that could lead to actors being targeted and harassed.

“If the proposed initiative were to pass, adult performers would immediately be targeted by stalkers and profiteers, who would use the initiatives’ sue-a-performer provision to harass and extort adult performers,” Diane Duke, CEO of Free Speech Coalition, which represents actors and directors in the adult film industry.

“This is an unconscionable initiative that would take a legal and safe industry and push its performers into the shadows.”

She said performers are already tested every 14 days and they “have long protested mandatory condom legislation.”

It could also hurt the state’s economy.

A similar measure passed in Los Angeles County in 2012, and since then, the number of permits issued in the county for adult films has dropped by 90 percent, the Times reported last year.

“Unfortunately, the proponent of the bill, Michael Weinstein, is more concerned with his personal moral crusade than the real-life concerns of adult performers,” Duke said.

“It does not seem to matter to him that this initiative endangers performer’s lives, nor does it matter that his previous attempts to force condoms on porn stars have been opposed by legislators, HIV activists, editorial boards and the performers themselves.”