Last night HBO's Vice News Tonight highlighted a discussion of Prop 60—and guess what? They think it's a bad idea. Among the interviewees supporting that position were Evil Angel owner John Stagliano and adult performers A.J. Applegate and Chanel Preston (who's also the president of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee). On the other side were former performer Derrick Burts and Yes On 60 campaign manager Rick Taylor—and reporter Michael Moynihan managed to get a couple of interesting admissions from him. But more on that later.
The segment opens with shots of Evil Angel's warehouse, and Stagliano offering to set Moynihan up with whatever porn DVDs strike his fancy—but in short order, they get down to the real meat: What Stagliano thinks of Prop 60.
"The first thing is, it says there's been a large spread of disease in the adult business with no reference to facts, no reference to context, and they're lying there," Stagliano declares in response to Moynihan's question about what's wrong with Prop 60. And when Moynihan brings up the argument that some performers have claimed to have contracted HIV on set, Stagliano is there with the facts: "But they didn't. They couldn't have gotten it from another performer because there is no other performer that they work with that is also HIV-positive or was at the time of having sex with them; that's all."
Cut to Derrick Burts, described as "one of the public faces of Prop 60," on the set of the TV ad he filmed for Yes On 60, with Moynihan noting, "Burts has speculated that he was infected on a gay porn set in Florida, and has also acknowledged that he worked as an escort," followed quickly by shots of former performer Cameron Bay's Yes On 60 ad—but Moynihan's first question to "the California political operative" Rick Taylor "who's running the campaign" is, "So when the adult industry says there hasn't been a transmission of HIV on a porn set since 2004, you say that's not true?"
"I'm saying none of us know, truthfully, and they don't know and I'm not gonna tell you I know," Taylor admits. "What I do know is that STDs on a daily basis gets transmitted."
"STDs? But if this is the concern, why do the ads you guys run have three people that stated they have contracted HIV on an adult set?" Moynihan retorts. "They're saying that in the ad. They're saying 'we contracted this on a set' but you're saying you don't know?"
"I'm saying that I believe they did. I'm saying I believe they did," Taylor answers.
"How do you believe that they did?" Moynihan presses.
"Well, because I believe them," Taylor affirms, referring to Burts, Bay and her partner Rod Daily.
Cut back to Stagliano, who denies that, as an HIV-positive person, he might be viewed as the perfect case for why Prop 60 is needed, but Stagliano disabuses Moynihan of that notion.
"That's not true," Stagliano states, "because I got it from a transsexual in Brazil doing crazy stuff at 4 o'clock in the morning. I dealt in an extreme sport and I made a mistake in that area. So I'm not gonna tell other people that they can't choose their level of risk tolerance in that area? That would be very presumptuous of me to do that."
Cut to an adult movie set where AJ Applegate, the featured performer, admits that she's breaking the law by shooting in L.A. county, but when asked whether having sex with other performers worries her, she responds, "Not at all. I would actually feel way more unsafe if I was doing a civilian on the street. I would have way more risk of getting an STD than I do shooting."
The segment then explains how the industry tests every 14 days and uses the PASS system to sideline performers who may have contracted an STD—including Applegate's potential partner of the day.
"We do a really amazing job and our testing system really works really well," assures Chanel Preston, Moynihan's next interviewee. "In your personal life if you have intercourse, generally condoms are fine, whereas we're having intercourse anywhere from 30 minutes at least to hour, and so when we use condoms, it's very, very different, especially for women, and just basically causes a rash, like micro-tears that actually makes us more susceptible to other infections and so it doesn't keep us more safe necessarily, and that's the problem."
At this point, Moynihan voices his suspicion that one of the reasons for opposing Prop 60 is that "the law's true intent is to drive the industry out of the state."
"Condom movies don't sell as well," Stagliano affirms, "and because we're all just scraping by right now in porn, the public has said they don't want to buy that product; they want to see the product where people are really enjoying themselves, so it's not a question of whether or not we make movies with condoms; it's a question of whether we make movies at all."
Finally, Moynihan gets to the main reason the industry opposes the proposition: lawsuits against anyone who profits from the content.
"Any individual in the state of California can choose to sue an adult producer or anybody with a financial interest in the sale of a scene that does not use a condom," Stagliano explains, with Moynihan adding that such lawsuits would reveal performers' real names and addresses to the public.
"There's so many ways that performers make money now that would make them liable under Prop 60," Preston adds.
"We'll go somewhere else; we'll go to Europe, whatever; come after us, you assholes!" Stagliano finally exclaims as the segment concludes. "Goddamn! Why is it that people want to run other people's lives?"
The full Vice News segment can be viewed here.
UPDATE: The show was not, as previously identified, the season premiere of Vice News Tonight. AVN regrets the error.
