If the government is good at anything, especially regarding the porn industry, it’s good at pretending to give a damn about individuals while simultaneously working to make the profession impossible to pursue.If the government is good at anything, especially regarding the porn industry, it’s good at pretending to give a damn about individuals while simultaneously working to make the profession impossible to pursue. The latest example of this comes neatly packaged and presented as California Assembly Bill 2798.

The bill, which, on its surface, sounds like nothing more than a heartfelt desire to make sure performers are protected from STDs is, in reality, an administrative and medical nightmare, as well as a likely road to unemployment for many and increased stigma for the industry overall. In a nutshell, AB 2798 would require that all sex video performers be screened for every STD imaginable every two weeks and that anyone who tests positive for anything would be barred from performing in a video – even if they were willing to use condoms. Further, producers would be denied the right to hire these performers, even if everyone agreed to use condoms.

Currently, the industry uses a 27-day testing cycle that looks for HIV, Gonorrhea, and Chlamydia. Other tests are available but optional. If the proposed bill becomes law, not only would testing for these diseases be mandated by the government, but testing for Syphilis, Hepatitis A, B, and C, Chancroid, Herpes simplex virus (HSV), and Human papilloma virus (HPV) would also be required.

On its face, this sounds like a great idea. Anything that protects people’s health, right? But all you have to do is scratch below the surface to see that this could not only be a disaster for the adult industry, particularly the gay side, but is utterly unworkable and entirely out of touch with the reality of sex, both within the professional sex world and the world of sex at large.

Fortunately, not only have voices within the adult industry pointed these things out, but so have voices within the public health advocate community and the ACLU. The effectiveness of condom use aside, STDs such as HPV can be difficult to detect, even with testing, while others can be quickly transmitted but not as quickly detected. As many sexually active adults realize, no matter how careful one is, sexuality is not without its risks, however minimal. Much like life in general.

Although tests now exist that can identify the presence of the various herpes strains, they cannot tell whether a person’s mouths or genitals are infected, nor how frequent or how communicable the virus is. Since approximately 80 million Americans have genital herpes alone, chances are exceptionally good that the virus exists within the adult industry, as well. After all, porn stars are members of the general population and often have partners who do not work in porn. Yet no one is trying to “protect” the general population by outlawing sex between non-porn performers in spite of the one-in-six chance that any given partner is likely to be infected and may not even know it, since a majority of those infected are asymptomatic.

Given these facts, perhaps one of the most worrisome of the many worrisome elements of this proposed bill is its allowance for performers who test positive for any STD to sue production companies for damages. Free Speech Coalition (www.freespeechcoalition.com) Executive Director Pro Tem and chief lobbyist Kat Sunlove sums it up beautifully when she asks, “How are you going to decide which set that came from?” Given that most performers do multiple shoots between tests, tracking the precise infecting individual would be challenging in the extreme. Add to that the possibility of a performer being infected, perhaps even non-sexually, by someone outside of the industry, where such draconian testing requirements do not exist, and the ridiculousness of the situation becomes obvious.

The bill, authored by Tahoe City Republican Assembly member Tim Leslie, was motivated by the recent HIV positive diagnosis of three adult performers after one of them returned from Brazil with the disease. Ironically, the same inferior HIV tests used outside of the United States would become the preferred tests for the adult industry if this bill becomes law. Currently, Adult Industry Medicine (www.aim-med.org) uses the PCR/DNA test, which can detect HIV itself within a week, whereas the Western Blot and ELISA tests look for only the antibodies and can take up to six months before an infected individual tests positive. What Leslie’s bill would likely do is cull out performers with less serious infections, while making it easier to transmit deadly HIV. As Dr. Sharon Mitchell, executive director of AIM explains, this bill is “taking a step back, medically. It’s just not well thought out.”

Ultimately, the bill is less about protecting porn stars and more about paranoia and misconceptions concerning both the adult industry and STDs. When Leslie states, “There have been all these outbreaks of people spreading diseases,” he speaks from ignorance and fear. His true concerns are revealed when he says, “These infections can reach any of us. What we’re trying to do is protect the public.” Three HIV infections within the straight porn world in more than five years is hardly an epidemic. In fact, the 2.8% infection rate for currently tested STDs within the porn population is more than half that of infections found among the country at large. And although gay performers are estimated to have a 30% – 50% rate of HIV infection, this number reflects the population from which they originally come – which is one reason that they use condoms during filming and thus decrease the risk of further transmission. The rate of infection among amateurs is, of course, impossible to estimate, as is this bill’s possible impact on amateur porn performers or those that do solo work.

Fortunately, Leslie assures the world that his bill is only a “first step” and that he is willing to consider modifications. Hopefully this “first step” is not in the direction of sending performers and production companies into the hills, out of the state, out of the country, or out of business. Hopefully the modification Leslie is willing to make to AB 2798 is letting it quietly slip away so that AIM and other qualified professionals can continue the excellent educational and testing work that has done for years and has kept the rate of industry infections low.

This article was originally published on Yes Portal.

Darklady is a full-time professional sex writer and erotic event coordinator with a decade of experience in all areas of the adult industry and the Internet. She writes erotica, screenplays, “How To,” Q&A, features, personal experience columns and reviews of adult products, gay, straight, bisexual, transsexual, and S/M related videos, DVDs, and publications. You can learn more about her plans for world conquest at www.darklady.com, as well as more about the Masturbate-a-Thon, her extremely innovative annual fundraiser, at www.masturbate-a-thon.org.