FSC Statement on Affirmative Vote by CA Senate Labor Relations for AB1576

This morning, California Senate Labor & Industrial Relations Committee cleared AB 1576, the legislation to require mandatory barrier protection use on adult production sets. The bill will now proceed to be heard by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Regarding today’s developments, Free Speech Coalition issued this statement:

“Today’s vote is a slap in the face to adult performers, who have been outspoken in their opposition this bill and have worked so hard to defeat it. In his words and actions, Hall has made it abundantly clear that he knows little about the performers he seeks to control, and respects their opinions even less. He has not worked with them on this bill, and has actively spurned their offers to create an alternate solution that would strengthen comprehensive workplace safety measures while respecting their real concerns about privacy and personal choice.

Supporters of AB 1576 stated again in the hearing that the bill relies on the PASS database for testing and enforcement. That Hall would rely on our private procedures says something both about the strength of our existing  procedures, and the short-sightedness of Hall as to what this bill will cost the state. As the bill approaches appropriations, we suspect that Senators will have very serious concerns about how a private testing system run privately serve as the backbone for government regulation.

We understand that Assemblymember Hall wants a bill for his legacy, but such legacy should not be built on the backs of adult performers.”

St. James Infirmary Joins Opposition to AB 1576 Condom Law

SAN FRANCISCO — The St. James Infirmary is urging California state Senators to vote against the controversial condoms-in-porn bill, citing the potential to criminalize of adult performers and producers, and the consequent weakening of the industry’s testing system.

“We are disappointed that neither Assemblyman Hall nor AHF has ever reached out to performers or the adult film industry to consult with workers’ concerns and how to make a sensible law that actually protects workers rather than harms them,” the group said in a statement. “We urge politicians to vote NO on AB 1576 and invite legislators to craft a policy with performers, health care professionals, and adult industry producers.”

The St. James Infirmary joins a growing number of progressive organizations fighting a bill that would make it a crime to not use a condom on an adult film set. The Harvey Milk Democratic Club, the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee, the Erotic Service Providers Union, the Center for Sex and Culture and the Transgender Law Center have all opposed the bill introduced by Assemblymember Isadore Hall.

“The St. James Infirmary has been a crucial resource for adult performers for over fifteen years, and we’re so glad to have their help in defeating this bill, ” says Diane Duke, Executive Director of the Free Speech Coalition. “As a clinic, they are on the front lines of the battle for sex worker health, and are not afraid to stand up to the moral crusaders behind AB 1576.”

Full text of the statement is below.

 

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** Stop AB 1576 from Harming Adult Film Performers
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“The St. James Infirmary, a peer-based occupational health and safety clinic for sex workers and our families, opposes AB 1576 and urges California Senate members to vote against it.

This is the third time Assemblymember Isadore Hall and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) have attempted to push a mandatory use of “protective equipment” (e.g., condoms) on a state level, and we hope this is once again defeated and for the last time.

As a clinic that centers itself around harm reduction and workers rights, we believe mandating “protective equipment” along with requiring producers to hold on to HIV and STD testing information is an invasion of performers’ privacy and creates an alarming liability to performers and producers. If this AB 1576 becomes law, every Dick and Jane shooting an adult film will be responsible with upholding HIPAA protected HIV and STD information for performers. The room for error is great and concerning.

AB 1576 is touted as a response to a “public health crisis” that AHF has manufactured. The truth is that there have been no cases of HIV transmission on an adult film set since 2004. A self-imposed industry standard of HIV and STD testing for performers every 14 days has been effective in reducing transmission to incredibly low rates compared to the general public. Because this risk is so small, we question the real motive behind this bill.

We are deeply concerned of the potential criminalization of industry professionals and performers under this bill. If Cal-OSHA places a pornography set under the same standards and scrutiny as a medical setting, the transmission of fluids, whether accidental or not, may carry criminal penalties to producers and performers.

AB 1576 will weaken testing protocol and expose workers to infection. The bill defers to the California Department of Public Health (DPH) and Center for Disease Control recommendations for HIV and STD testing, which has no specific understanding of performers risks. A rapid HIV antibody test detects HIV in most people at 8 ½ weeks, with DPH extending that until 6 months, whereas all major producers now use a HIV viral load test which detects the virus in 7-10 days after contact. Most adult film producers already require full-panel STI testing no earlier than 14 days prior to any sexual shoot.

AB 1576 will drive out businesses, and it already has. The porn industry has had an estimated worth of $6 billion in California. The thousands of jobs it provides to performers, technicians, videographers, cooks, etc., will be lost. Here in San Francisco, we serve many performers and their partners. We are concerned about the unintended consequences of eliminating one of the safest options to engage in sex work.

We are disappointed that neither Assemblyman Hall nor AHF has ever reached out to performers or the adult film industry to consult with workers’ concerns and how to make a sensible law that actually protects workers rather than harms them.

We urge politicians to vote NO on AB 1576 and invite legislators to craft a policy with performers, health care professionals, and adult industry producers that actually provides more worker protection rather the severe problems that AB 1576 will create.”

The 9 Most Outrageous Flaws In AHF’s Performer STI Study

The numbers regarding STI transmission put out yesterday by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation are shocking in their duplicity, and the study is shameful in its methodology.

For months, AHF has claimed that its mandatory condom bill, AB1576, was not an attack on the industry or its performers. However, it’s clear from this study that they have no respect for performers themselves, and that their ultimate goal is not to improve the industry, but to shut it down. In his press conference, Michael Weinstein claimed that performers were a threat to public health, and are “leading to the spread of disease outside the industry.”

If AHF wanted to foment a moral panic about porn, this study is a great way to do it. A few points worth bearing in mind as you consider their conclusions.

• Rather than publishing the study, which would allow the press to examine the numbers and the methodology fully, AHF released it as an infographic poster — less information than you’d get an 8th grade science project. This isn’t data, it’s propaganda.

• Rather than only using data from the regulated facilities where adult performers test every two weeks, and which would provide a true random sampling, AHF solicited a portion of their participants instead from an STI treatment clinic, which they knew would skew numbers higher.

• A full 20% of the participants in the study had not shot a single adult film in the past month, making the claim that these numbers reflect workplace transmissions spurious at best.

• In fact, over 70% of the participants said they didn’t use a condom in their private life, and another 23% said they had exchanged drugs/sex for money. AHF made no effort to distinguish STIs that came from adult film workplaces from those contracted off-set. Furthermore, it fails to mention that any performer who tested positive for an STI at an industry testing center would be prevented from working. Still, in their press release, AHF stated that this study “[confirms] the high STD risk performers face at work.” No, it doesn’t.

• This abstract, released before the study began, shows that they went into the study looking for a specific result — that adult film performers are a threat to themselves and others — rather than an accurate one.

• They didn’t get the numbers they wanted on other STIs, so they left them out. The initial proposal for the study stated an intention to study STIs including syphilis and HIV. They only released data on chlamydia and gonorrhea, suggesting that even with their skewed methodology, they couldn’t generate the evidence of the STI danger they wanted.

• The additional data they released about prostitution and drug use has nothing do with safe workplaces, and everything to do with debasing adult film performers. Because they haven’t released the backing data or even the questions used, no one can even evaluate this for truth, or see how it correlates. There are good reasons this paper hasn’t found a publisher.

• The data shows that porn performer have access to, and do often use condoms. Even in their own skewed study, almost a third of participants said they had used a condom on an adult film set in the past thirty days, which counters to their oft-repeated claim that performers denied condoms on set, and are “blacklisted” if they request one.

• This is not the first time that AHF has released data that was flawed and had to be retracted. Or even the second time. In fact, AHF has a long history of using junk science to support political campaigns.

This report treats adult performers like pariahs, and has little to do with workplace conditions. It’s tremendously revealing about AHF true intention, and the lengths they’ll go to push this bill on performers. Wisely, adult performers are familiar with AHF’s tactics and have been vehement in their opposition to AB1576 from its inception. Over 600 performers have signed a petition asking legislators to vote against AB1576, because it will criminalize adult filmmaking and make their working conditions less safe.

It’s also worth noting that in introducing the study, Michael Weinstein of AIDS Healthcare Foundation said that HIV is not his primary concern, STIs are. This is in stark contrast to everything he’s said for years, the people he has put forth at hearings, and the mission of his organization. It seems his own research is telling him what performers and producers have been trying to tell him — there hasn’t been a workplace transmission of HIV in the adult film industry in over ten years.

We look forward to the release of the actual numbers so that we can have an honest discussion about the real risks faced by adult performers, and how to best educate and protect them. We call on AHF to release the methodology and the raw data behind this study.

In the meantime, if you’re curious why performers oppose AB1576, check out this piece in Huffington Post by Casey Calvert.