Mandatory Condoms For Porn Moves One More Step Forward

shelleylubben.com

Madelyne Hernandez.

The Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) Standards Board on Thursday voted to go forward with a proposal to create an advisory panel to look at the possibility of requiring condoms on porn shoots in the state.

The six-member Standards Board voted unanimously to move the idea forward after hearing testimony from former porn stars such as Shelley Lubben, Jan (Meza) Merritt, and Madelyne Hernandez, an AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) spokeswoman told the Weekly. The meeting was held in Costa Mesa.

AHF has been pushing Cal-OSHA to regulate porn sets the way it does other work places. Specifically, the foundation wants the state to enforce its already in-place regulations on the exchange of blood-borne pathogens, which apply mainly to medical settings. By enforcing the rules for porn, condoms would likely be required just as gloves and hand-washing are facts of life for the medical industry.

Explicit and sometimes lascivious testimony preceded the vote, with Hernandez describing how she was tricked and "given cocaine and alcohol to get through [a] scene" with 75 men, most of whom, she argues, had not been tested for sexually transmitted diseases under the industry's current system of self-regulation.

The vote will allow an advisory board to be set up and eventually make recommendations to the full Cal-OSHA board about how to proceed on the issue of requiring condoms.

An attorney for the industry argued, however, that requiring condoms would push the industry, already shooting more and more overseas and in amateur, underground locations, outside of the San Fernando Valley and California.

-With reporting from Weekly wire services. Got news? Email us.