Once per month, Dr. Chauntelle Tibbals will be telling us a little bit about what’s going on in adult entertainment and why it should matter to you.
Oh, happy August – it’s blazing hot outside, as well as in… Well, at least in Porn Valley it is!
First, I know you want to know what’s been happening with AB1576, the bill seeking to mandate condoms in porn (among many other things) that’s currently making its way through the California legislature. Since my last column, the state’s Senate Appropriations Committee has put Assembly Bill 1576 (aka AB1576) “on suspense” on August 4, 2014.
In the spirit of catch up, here’s the lowdown on AB1576 that I wrote back in April. Since then, the bill has been *updated* to include requirements for STI testing documentation – the standards of which are actually less stringent than those currently self-imposed by the industry – and mandates requiring producers to disclose performers’ STI test results to the State of California’s Department of Industrial Relations. Those of you who are familiar with the full history of this debacle will be quick to notice the irony dripping from these two new stipulations. Entities perpetuating AB 1576 used to rally against testing and for medical privacy.
Anywho, bills are put on suspense when their cost exceeds a certain budgetary limit. So basically, condoms in porn have been deemed too pricey for the Golden State.
I’m sure there will be even more discussion of AB1576 upcoming this week, as a final decision (supposedly) has to be made by August 15. All I’m really wondering though is how much money gets dumped into all these meetings..? (You can see AB1576’s full history on Legal Track here.)
But state-sponsored hearings, be damned – AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the primary proponent behind AB1576, is still on it!
On August 6, 2014, AHF let the world know (via press release) that they had filed an official complaint with Nevada OSHA. The complaint was/is “against Bay Area adult film production company Cybernet Entertainment LLC, also doing business as Kink Studios, LLC and Kink.com (as well as DBA Hogtied.com and DBA BehindKink.com), over recent filming that may have exposed employees – adult film performers – to infectious disease by exposure to blood and other potentially infectious materials.” (here)
Kink, which used to live in the Armory in San Francisco, recently relocated to Las Vegas. So have a number of other formerly California-based adult companies. This complaint isn’t the first one AHF has filed against Kink or other adult studios for allegedly violating OSHA rules, but it is the first one to be filed with Nevada authorities.
Here’s my concern: since porn production isn’t technically legal in Nevada (at the state level, it’s currently only legal to produce porn in California and New Hampshire), how is this particular complaining going to work? In other words, how is this even Nevada OSHA’s jurisdiction/problem?
Le sigh.
But enough of this… Let’s talk content! In good-hot news, I recently received a screener for Evil Angel’s Voracious: Season Two, Vol. 3 [NSFW, duh]. It’s great stuff if you’re into serials, vampire horror, and (way) hardcore.
And speaking of Evil Angel, as a personal aside, I would just like to make mention of Christian S. Mann. Chris, who worked as Evil Angel’s General Manager and served as the Free Speech Coalition’s (FSC) Board President, was a tireless advocate for civil rights, an incredible mentor and friend, and a human of epic proportions. He left this world on July 30, 2014 after an eighteen-month battle with pancreatic cancer. And though he went out far too soon, he lived every day in a manner that we should all strive to emulate.
He was, and always will be, heroic.
Chauntelle Tibbals is an embedded public sociologist. Her research has been published in numerous scholarly journals, and her ebook series You Study What? is available on Amazon. She has been studying the adult entertainment industry for more than ten years.
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