Dennis RomeroLast week the AIDS Healthcare Foundation told the world that it has filed a complaint with Nevada's Division of Occupational Safety and Health over a Kink.com adult video shoot in Las Vegas where condoms were not used.
The group argues that federal law, which seeks to protect workers from on-the-job exposure to blood-borne pathogens of the type sometimes found in sperm, mandates on-set condom use in porn. However, AHF has previously ceded that it's push to make prophylactics the law for adult video shouldn't apply to oral sex.
See also: Trouble Follows Kink.com's Move to Vegas
Over the weekend the folks at Kink.com sent out a gotcha statement aimed directly at the L.A.-based foundation:
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The June shoot that prompted the AHF complaint was oral only, Kink.com says:
The shoot “Vegas Road Trip” (referred to by AIDS Healthcare Foundation as “Hogtied Whores”), featured oral sex between both women and men. There was no anal or vaginal intercourse.
Oops?
Kink.com founder Peter Acworth says the shoot wouldn't have violated California's proposed mandatory condom law, known as AB 1576:
As far as we’re concerned, this is a retaliatory complaint meant to intimidate us from speaking against them at the state legislature. AIDS Healthcare Foundation has a long history of abusing the Cal/OSHA process to harass the adult industry. There’s nothing in this shoot that would violate their AB 1576 bill, let alone existing federal OSHA regulations, which don’t even mention condoms.
Kink.com says that when it confronted the AHF-affiliated “Support AB 1576” Twitter account on the matter, it responded by saying that the shoot was illegal nonetheless:
Porn production is not legal in Las Vegas, regardless of the sexual act. See NV Rev. Stat. § 244.345.
Only California and New Hampshire have explicitly legalized the exchange of money for sex in situations where performance was being filmed or photographed.
The backstory here is that Bay Area-based Kink.com announced last month that, in the face of California's proposed condom legislation, it was establishing out-of-state facilities in Vegas.
See also: Fearing California Condom Law, Kink Porn Studio Opens Facilities in Vegas
Credit: davitydave/Flickr
Porn companies have been threatening to relocate from their longtime base in the San Fernando Valley if mandatory condoms in adult video becomes law in California. But, so far, most have not actually left town because, some say, California is one of the few places where porn production is technically legal.
The industry says consumers don't want to see condoms, and that forcing them on performers would only push the industry out of state and underground, where conditions would be less safe. It says its voluntary, twice-a-month STD testing for performers works.
AHF argues that, when it comes to protecting workers from blood-borne pathogens, there is no substitute for condoms.
The foundation appeared to respond to Kink.com's new Vegas facilities announcement with its complaint, which alleged that the June 8 Kink.com shoot “may have encouraged, employees to engage in activities in Las Vegas that are highly likely to spread bloodborne pathogens and OPIM [other potentially infectious materials] in the workplace.”
The foundation's president, Michael Weinstein, said, “This new complaint in Nevada is based on the simple fact that they cannot hide from federal law there, or anywhere in the U.S.”
But Kink.com says its production was all-oral and thus legit, at least where condoms are concerned.
In response to Kink.com's oral defense, Weinstein appeared to hope that the studio will continue to hold the line at oral sex when it comes to condom-free porn.
“We congratulate Kink.com for its commitment to film no vaginal or anal sex scenes in Nevada without condoms,” he said in a statement sent to the Weekly.
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