AIDS Healthcare Foundation boss Michael Weinstein wants us to believe there’s a health crisis in porn. The opposite is true.
As the proponent of California Proposition 60, Weinstein and his militant litigation machine have poured millions of dollars into a ballot initiative that would actually leave porn performers with a lot less protection than they already have, while driving a job- and revenue-generating industry out of state.
Weinstein and AHF may be spending big on an ad blitz, but they aren’t telling the whole story: The porn industry’s protocols require STD testing twice every month, and not a single HIV transmission has occurred on a porn set in over 12 years! Think about that the next time you meet someone in a bar: When was your bar pick-up last tested? When were you? Porn stars in California are far safer from STDs than the general public.
Theoretically designed to protect porn talent, Prop. 60 would in fact make California’s adult performers far worse off.
• Prop. 60 could force adult performers to publicly disclose personal information, including legal names and home addresses, enabling crazed fans to stalk porn stars.
• Prop. 60 would give EVERY Californian the right to sue adult film producer-performers if a condom is not visible. Married couples filming in their own homes could be sued.
• Prop. 60 would replace existing, effective STD testing standards with Cal/OSHA standards, meaning less effective tests conducted less often. That’s one reason Prop. 60 is OPPOSED by the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee (APAC), the only adult industry group composed solely of adult performers.
• Weinstein dubbed this initiative “The California Safer Sex in the Adult Film Industry Act.” Safer? Even Prop. 60’s name is misleading.
In addition, Prop. 60 would install Weinstein himself as California’s de facto “porn czar” — he’d be “sworn in” as a state employee, and he could not be fired — only the legislature could vote him out of the job.
Prop. 60 will have a negative impact on the California economy.
• According to California’s nonpartisan fiscal advisor, Prop. 60 could cost taxpayers “TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS” each year, although trial lawyers would benefit.
• Prop. 60 includes a provision that if its unsafe, draconian measures are challenged in court, the State of California would be required to defend it AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE.
• Porn is created as entertainment, but Weinstein and AHF want to impose Cal/OSHA practices that would make shooting a porn movie into a clinical process. If supporters of Prop. 60 think austere scenes will sell and continue to be made, they’re wrong. On the contrary, Prop. 60 will force the multi-billion dollar porn industry — with all its employment and tax revenue — out of California.
Prop. 60 will cost taxpayers millions of dollars, violate worker privacy, establish Weinstein as a state-sponsored porn czar and, most dangerously, compromise the safety of the very workers it’s supposed to be protecting. Perhaps that’s why Prop. 60 is OPPOSED by AIDS Project Los Angeles, Los Angeles LGBT Center, San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Adult Performer Actors Guild and the Transgender Law Center.
Even in an era of unprecedented partisan bickering, Prop. 60 is OPPOSED by BOTH the California Democratic Party and the California Republican Party, in addition to the California Libertarian Party. Media as diverse as the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Diego Union-Tribune, Orange County Register, Sacramento Bee, Fresno Bee and Mercury News ALL OPPOSE PROP. 60.
VOTE NO ON PROP. 60 TO KEEP CALIFORNIA PERFORMERS AND COMMERCE SAFE!