LOS ANGELES—Earlier today, GayPornBlog.com and TheSword.com each carried stories indicating that the California legislation (AB 1576) introduced by Assemblyman Isadore Hall that mandates condom and personal protective equipment on porn shoots, and which passed the Labor and Employment Committee yesterday, bans HIV+ performers from performing in the industry.
That was news to us, and indicated that there was language in the bill that we had not noticed or had misinterpreted that carried a heavy penalty for HIV+ performers, so we went back through the bill to try to find the prohibition. We still could not find it, so we contacted industry attorney and Free Speech Coalition Board Chair Jeffrey Douglas, who testified yesterday before the Committee, to get his take on the claim of a ban.
After perusing the bill again, Douglas informed us in no uncertain terms that AB 1576 does not require workers in the industry to test negative for HIV or any other disease in order to work, only that they must test.
To be sure, there is much in this bill that Douglas and others are greatly concerned about, including, of course, its core mandate regarding the use of personal protective equipment by all porn performers, but Douglas appeared eager to correct the record on a claim that, if it were true, would rightly cause a lot of anxiety, especially in the gay community.
The current version of AB 1576 can be found here.
