Why Not Try a Condom?
A few years back the federal government began a crack down on the porn industry with a whole series of new required protocol that must be followed in order to get porn productions to viewers. Mountains of legal work, disclosure statements and other red tape were added to the company’s routines causing many to fold and others to have to seriously alter their daily book keeping practices. The government’s explanation about the new rules was that it was stepping in to make sure that the industry had some sort of accountability and system in place in order to make it safer for the performers as well as the audiences. Oddly enough those regulations over looked one of the most obvious safety precautions and did not require the industry to mandate the use of condoms.
With the recent headlines about bisexual porn star Derrick Burts (who no one has ever heard of) who performed in gay films as Derek Chambers and as Cameron Reid in straight films, claiming to have become infected with HIV on a porn set and the subsequent shut down of the industry for over a month as a safety precaution, the question about mandatory condoms has once again become a huge topic of conversation within the industry.
Weeks after Burts claims that the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, an organization that caters to the porn industry and provides testing and results to production companies as a safety precaution, did not offer assistance after his diagnosis, the Los Angeles County public health officials served a cease-and-desist order to the organization which had apparently been operating without a license since opening its doors in 1998, according to the LA Times.
The gay side of the industry has self regulated for years and most of the top companies like Falcon, Channel 1, and Colt require condoms for all productions. These companies are still the biggest in the business even with the introduction of online porn, proving that condom use does not hurt sales. There are many gay companies that still promote bareback sex and actually use it as a selling point of their site, but the rest of the industry frowns upon the practice and these companies have yet to reach the success status of the aforementioned as a result.
In the same instance almost no straight company requires condoms and have relied on test results from AIM and other testing facilities for the welfare of their performers.
So the question becomes why not just require condoms for all productions? I have heard arguments that condoms take away from the fantasy of porn, but do they really limit enjoyment of the sex that much? I mean fucking is still fucking even if the dick is wrapped. And if ALL porn had condoms it isn’t like people would stop watching it altogether just because they were practicing safe sex. To me when I watch porn I want to be aroused and entertained, but when I watch unsafe sex I sometimes can’t get the thought of what diseases the performers are swapping back and forth while they are filming which is clearly a huge turn off. If the government truly wanted to make the industry safer they would simply mandate condom use to all companies. Hey, no one wants the government messing with their lives, but if they are there to regulate and protect anyway, they might as well do something good.
-Dylan
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