L.A. County Voters Approve Condom Mandate for Adult Films

Advocates say it's necessary to protect performers from STIs, but the industry cites a low incidence of such infections.

Trudy Ring

Trudy Ring is The Advocate’s senior politics editor and copy chief. She has been a reporter and editor for daily newspapers and LGBTQ+ weeklies/monthlies, trade magazines, and reference books. She is a political junkie who thinks even the wonkiest details are fascinating, and she always loves to see political candidates who are groundbreaking in some way. She enjoys writing about other topics as well, including religion (she’s interested in what people believe and why), literature, theater, and film. Trudy is a proud “old movie weirdo” and loves the Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s above all others. Other interests include classic rock music (Bruce Springsteen rules!) and history. Oh, and she was a Jeopardy! contestant back in 1998 and won two games. Not up there with Amy Schneider, but Trudy still takes pride in this achievement.

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Trudy Ring

November 07 2012 6:10 PM EST

November 17 2015 5:28 AM EST

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Los Angeles County voters Tuesday approved a measure mandating condom use in the making of adult films within the county.

Advocates who proposed the initiative said it is necessary to protect performers from HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. It passed with 55.9% of the vote, the Los Angeles Times reports.

"This is a major referendum on the subject of safer sex," one of the backers, AIDS Healthcare Foundation president Michael Weinstein, told the Times.

Condom use has been common in gay-porn films since the 1980s, but makers of straight porn have been reluctant to require performers to wear condoms, saying it makes the films less appealing to audiences.

Producers also say performers are tested regularly for STIs and that there is a low incidence of such infections. They say there have been no cases of HIV transmission on straight-porn sets in the past several years; when a performer in L.A. was diagnosed with HIV last year, it turned out to be a false positive. But condom advocates such as Weinstein point out that many other diseases can be transmitted sexually.

Weinstein said advocates will be monitoring county health officials to make sure they enforce the new law.