I Don't Watch Porn but...
[Click to read]Here is an interesting legal issue: Whether or not the legislature can require actors in pornographic films to use condoms. (Equally interesting side issue: Whether or not Girl Ipsa will even be able to finish writing this post. BLUSH) On the Girl Ipsa radar today is a strongly worded letter to producers of pornographic films authored by California Assemblyman Paul Koretz.
Why, you may wonder, does he care about this condom use issue? There was a recent HIV scare in the porn community but that was addressed by a voluntary "work stoppage". Why the need to send pointed letters?
Well, Mr. Koretz is chairman of the Labor and Employment Committee and apparently thinks that condom use, in this particular case, is a work place health and safety issue. Now, think about that for a minute. At first blush you might want to think that it's a privacy issue. More, um... conservative readers might posit the question: If we can not regulate sodomy how in blue blazes can we regulate condom use? To which I'd reply "Excellent question!"
You're gonna have to look at it from the work place view point. To my mind, it's a lot like what medics refer to as Universal Precautions. In my former, pre-legal, life I was a medic***. I worked with old fire fighters who never really wanted to put on a glove, since it slowed them down. As for me, I liked two pairs of gloves and an extra long stethoscope so I never had to get too close to any kind of goo. It was a safety issue, not a personal preference issue. When I worked as an instructor, teaching new medics, the failure to glove-up was a failure to pass my course. No bickering! It's the law.
I think that this is a good analogy for the condom issue. The threat of disease, even deadly disease, is there every time these folks go to work. It is reasonable for a state to require safety measures to protect the health of these workers.
Nevertheless, I predict that we're going to hear privacy and consent arguments from opponents of this theoretical legislation. They will argue that it is the business of consenting adults whether or not to use a specific type of birth control, or any birth control at all (or, lets face it: AID of any kind) for that matter. This argument is attractive but I think it is beside the point. It remains to be seen, though, if this will ever make it to legislative debate at all. It would be refreshing if the industry just voluntarily adopted a policy of protection. But I'm not holding my breath. (Lexington Steele, president of Mercenary Pictures, has both a truly funny name and the opinion that this is none of our business)
On a tenuously related front, our intrepid assemblyman would also like to raise the legal smoking age to 21. I am going to have to firmly support this bit of governmental mucking about in the private lives of it's citizens.
Here is the post-post wrap-up:
Girl Ipsa says YES to Condoms and NO to Cigarettes.
Lets face it, you were gonna boil it down to that anyway so why waste time?
***For those of you who know the difference between EMT 1, EMT 2, EMTD and EMTP; I was an EMTD and now just say medic since brevity is the soul of wit
posted by Girl Ipsa at 7:41 AM
2 Comments:
As I recall, Nevada's legal brothels require condom use on a health protection basis...I doubt anyone would bring the suit to challenge it.
But hey, raise the smoking age all you want. Never gonna work. I'm not too old to remember being about 12 and still buying my own...no way I looked 18.
I think they need to make cigarettes less attractive. Maybe if they poisoned one in every pack at random...course I'd still play the odds and get through the first half a pack.
Ah, I think they poison all of them...
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