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US courts struck down most legal impediments to sexually explicit expression in the late 1960s. Since then, people pursuing assorted agendas have sought to regulate pornography by various means. In the spring of 2004, an occurrence of HIV transmission in the porn industry kindled a blaze of regulatory efforts focused on disease control.

In April, when two straight adult video performers, Darren James and Lara Roxx, tested positive for HIV, a number of heterosexual porn companies temporarily shut down. Led by Jill Kelly Productions, at least a dozen studios embarked on a 60-day moratorium; others agreed to suspend filming until more was known about the spread of infection. The incident drew a disproportionate amount of media coverage across the globe.

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Approximately 60 women and men who had had recent sexual contact with James, Roxx, or their sex partners went into voluntary quarantine. LA County health officials took the unprecedented step of seizing these individuals' confidential medical records at the Adult Industry Medical (AIM) Health Care Foundation, a facility that tests porn performers for HIV and standard sexually transmitted diseases, and offers counseling, support groups, and referrals.

By early May, testing had confirmed that four of the quarantined performers had contracted HIV. For an industry whose talent pool includes 1200 models, this figure was hardly catastrophic, but it was of grave concern. It also provided ammunition for hostile politicians, the anti-porn left, and the sanctimonious right.

Darren James believes he was infected on March 10, when he had unprotected anal sex with a woman during a porn shoot in Rio de Janeiro. Soon afterward, he worked in the US with 13 female models, among them Lara Roxx, who was penetrated anally on camera, without condoms, by James and a second male performer. Both men ejaculated before pulling out. The shoot involving Roxx, an industry novice from Canada, took place on March 24.

According to Adult Video News, "James is known to have tested religiously every three weeks." Porn models have been obtaining HIV tests at regular intervals for years. Monthly tests have been standard since 2003. As a result, perhaps, HIV scares have been minimal. But they occur. In 1999, a straight male performer who has since left the industry tested positive for HIV, but appears to have infected no one. In 1998, a male performer armed with forged test results was found to have infected five women before his true HIV status was determined.

In straight porn, the performers most seriously at risk are women. Men are thought to have a one percent chance of infection through sex with an HIV-positive female partner. In mainstream gay porn, where some unknown number of models-- variously estimated at 30 to 50 per cent-- are HIV-positive, transmission during filming is mostly prevented by widespread enforcement of condom use. Another safety factor in adult video, both straight and gay, has been the convention of external ejaculations, visible proofs of male orgasm-- called "money shots" in a business tightly focused on maximizing profits.

The 60-day moratorium was a costly proposition for a business that employs 6000 people and may generate more than $10 billion annually. Adult videos are produced in New York, Florida, and elsewhere, but the epicenter of the industry in the US is Greater Los Angeles, especially the San Fernando Valley. Major producers of gay porn also operate in San Diego (All Worlds Video) and San Francisco (Falcon, Colt, Raging Stallion). In California, porn occupies a minor but not negligible chunk of the state's economy. As a result, legislative efforts to stamp out California's porn industry seldom get very far. Attempts to rein it in and clean it up are gaining momentum, however.

Rubbers for stormy weather

LA County Public Health Director Jonathan Fielding compares requiring condoms on porn sets to requiring hard hats at construction sites. On June 4, a few days before the end of the 60-day moratorium, Dr. Fielding testified before a California Assembly Labor Committee hearing on health and safety in porn production. He advocated legislation that would make latex condom use obligatory for "all high-risk sexual encounters" in adult films, require porn models to be screened for all sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), impose industry-wide safe-sex education and training, and introduce "high-quality monitoring" of porn sets by state officials "to insure compliance."

Acting on behalf of the Los Angeles County Health Department, Fielding had filed a complaint with the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Cal-OSHA) soon after the positive test results of James and Roxx were made public. The aim of the complaint was to trigger an investigation resulting in enforced condom use.

California state law requires employers to develop guidelines for health and safety in the workplace, and to provide protection for workers risking exposure to harmful substances, such as HIV-infected blood. A single instance of exposing an employee to harmful material can mean a hefty fine. But Cal-OSHA's regulations apply to permanent employees, not freelancers; the independent status of most porn performers may limit the scope of a crackdown. Nevertheless, in September, Cal-OSHA imposed $30,000 fines on TTB Productions and Evasive Angles, two adult video companies based in Van Nuys, for allowing models to have unprotected sex.

Members of the state legislature have been pursuing other remedies. California Assemblyman Tim Leslie (R.-Tahoe City) filed a bill that would institute mandatory testing of all models within two weeks prior to a porn shoot, and bar porn appearances by HIV-positive performers. Compulsory testing, which the ACLU opposes on privacy grounds, fails to recognize that a negative test result can simply mean that antibodies indicative of HIV infection have not yet appeared in a person's blood. Gay porn producers have complained that a ban on HIV-positive performers would not only thin the ranks of gay porn stars, but undermine their efforts to promote safer sex.

The June 4 Labor Committee hearing was chaired by Assemblyman Paul Koretz, a Democrat whose district encompasses West Hollywood. In August, Koretz sent a letter to 185 porn producers warning that if they did not enforce safety, he would seek to pass legislation compelling them to do so. Failure to make condoms mandatory, he warned, "invites the legislature to exercise its authority to mandate more stringent action."

"We applaud the thoughtful way Paul Koretz has carefully examined industry practices and weighed harm-reduction measures," says Michelle Freridj, Executive Director of the Free Speech Coalition (FSC), a porn-industry First Amendment advocacy group. "We're in agreement with most of Koretz's strategies. This is a great opportunity for the industry to demonstrate our ability to police ourselves."

Dr. Sharon Mitchell, co-founder and Executive Director of AIM, a reputable nonprofit porn-community resource set up in part with FSC funding, is less circumspect about the effects of political pressures that now beset the adult entertainment industry. AIM's testing protocols have been designed over time to respect the needs and sensitivities of porn performers. Mitchell finds government interference with her carefully crafted programs counterproductive. "The County always wants to stick their nose in," she laments.

Mitchell found the LA County Health Department's seizure of her quarantined clients' medical records last April especially offensive. She believes the episode was motivated by "a political agenda to get one of those people to make an OSHA complaint." To many of AIM's clients, the incident seemed a breach of trust. It was generally understood, however, that AIM's failure to comply could have ended in its demise.

In a statement following the seizure, AIM's board chairman Ira Levine speculated that "the real purpose of such attempts is to find non-industry contacts of quarantined players to prop up the dubious assertion that HIV within the porn-performer population represents a threat to the health of the surrounding community.... In the end, we fear some misguided regulatory effort is almost certain to emerge from the situation, as that is clearly the agenda of some officials who have created it."

AIM administers tests for all varieties of STD to more than a thousand porn performers monthly. Since opening its doors in 1998, the facility has performed more than 80,000 HIV tests using the PCR/DNA procedure, known for its accuracy. HIV transmissions among AIM's clientele have amounted to a fraction of one per cent.

Mitchell, a former porn star with a doctorate in human sexuality, commands considerable respect. Her interactions with industry personnel fuse toughness with compassion, and insight with tact. Days after panic struck over Darren James's HIV status, Dr. Mitchell was able to persuade 16 companies to require performers choosing to dispense with condoms to be tested every two weeks for STDs. As Ira Levine has pointed out, "Whatever we've been doing has worked rather better than anything County Health has attempted in local populations."

"The present state of safety on porn sets isn't nearly what it could be," Mitchell admits. "It's the exponential kink factor-- more and more risk with less and less latex." On the other hand, she says, "The basic push toward mandatory condoms and other forms of intervention terrifies people, so they just go underground, go on shooting without protection, and infect more people."

AIM, which serves both straight and gay performers, offers individuals a waiver permitting disclosure of HIV status. While most straight performers sign the waiver, Mitchell says, most gay porn performers choose to keep their status confidential. Since condom use predominates in all-male productions, many gay porn stars try to avoid the perceived stigma of HIV infection. (Notable exceptions include Jeff Palmer, Cole Tucker, and Tony Valenzuela.)

The AIDS pandemic was several years old before condoms appeared in gay adult films and videos. Early attempts to promote condom use in gay erotica came from educators, and from activist groups like the Gay Men's Health Crisis. The late Scott O'Hara, whose porn career began in 1983, reported using condoms for the first time in a bisexual video, Switch Hitters II, made in 1987-- the year of President Ronald Reagan's similarly belated acknowledgment of the AIDS crisis. In addition to O'Hara, the list of gay porn legends who would die of AIDS-related illness would include Jon King, Al Parker, Casey Donovan, Richard Locke, and Christopher Rage.

By 1988, condoms had become almost de rigueur in American gay and bisexual porn films, but reluctance lingered. (It was not until the '90s that top-of-the-line videos made in Europe, including those of French director Jean-Daniel Cadinot, began featuring condoms.) Resistance came from producers, directors, and models who felt that protective devices intruded upon the erotic fantasies they sought to create. Many believed that fans found condoms anti-erotic. Current attitudes toward safer sex in the straight porn industry mirror those prevalent in gay porn 17 years ago.

Since models in mainstream heterosexual videos must present recent HIV-negative test results, straight porn producers have rarely insisted that condoms be used on their sets. There is, however, an HIV-positive presence in straight adult video. In recognition of that presence, a few straight companies have embraced a higher degree of self-regulation. Vivid Entertainment, based in Van Nuys, enforces condom use alongside conscientious testing requirements. Similar policies prevail at VCA and Wicked, but many heterosexual porn producers have resisted condoms altogether.

In gay porn, condoms have for years appeared as if by magic on erect penises after penetration. When condoms turn up in adult films of any persuasion, the logistics of slipping them onto hard cocks are widely ignored. Occasionally condoms are written into scripts and mentioned by at least one partner during sex scenes; most often they materialize without comment. (One notably condom-conscious exception to the rule was Scott Masters's 1988 Top Man.) Condom use is rarely eroticized. A rubber will pop into view during fucking, and then disappear. Condoms are almost never seen in depictions of fellatio. Dental dams or female condoms are virtually unknown in sequences depicting cunnilingus; latex barriers hardly ever figure in scenes where rimming takes place.

A widespread assumption among straight producers is that while some performers might perhaps be HIV-positive, the threat is not great enough to warrant precautions. Their gay counterparts, on the other hand, tend to assume everyone is HIV-positive and take precautions accordingly.

"We use condoms in all our movies," declares John Rutherford of Colt Studio Group. "We don't create movies with oral cumshots or fisting. Colt depicts natural, masculine men having natural, safer sex."

Chris Ward and J.D. Slater's Raging Stallion Studios frequently depicts fisting and has built a large inventory of videos around the practice. In producer/director Ward's fisting scenes, latex gloves are not always used, and the style and intensity of penetration is sometimes extreme. But Raging Stallion prefaces videos with messages reminding viewers to exercise caution. "All sexual encounters... involve some degree of risk," reads the statement at the beginning of Fistpack: Up for Grabs. "It is your responsibility to discuss these risks with your physician before engaging in any sexual activity."

Golden showers have been featured in mainstream gay porn with growing frequency. Falcon Studios has ventured into piss-play, but has stopped short of overt urine ingestion. In Heat (2001), however, one of Titan Media's undisputed classics, Jason Branch pees into Lance Gear's mouth. In All Worlds Video's Rear Factor (2004), tirelessly piggy Tag Adams drinks a stream of urine.

Oral cumshots are also becoming more common. In 1999, when Paul Morgan ejaculated into Gino Colbert's mouth in New Age Pictures' Men in Blue, the scene sparked controversy. But semen-eating soon began to creep into top-tier gay releases on an if-you-blink-you-miss-it basis. Hardly anyone complained about Mark Anthony popping Lucas Magalhaes's dripping cock into his mouth in Kristen Bjorn's Isle of Men (2001).

In Raging Stallion/Monster Bang's recent, acclaimed (see The Guide, October 2004) Pokin' in the Boys Room, several cast members including co-director Michael Brandon swallow other models' semen. These oral cumshots are just one aspect of a smorgasbord of well-directed sex. But Raging Stallion's publicists have made the cum-eating factor central to promotions. "For the first time in almost 20 years," reads one studio blurb, "a major movie from a major studio is being released with full-on, tongue-coating, throat-soothing, over-the-top, good and tasty oral cumshots...."

"We film only what our own doctors feel is safe," Chris Ward insists. He recalls that he came into the porn business as a safe-sex activist, and points to his having modeled for the SOMA bare chest calendar, which benefits the AIDS Emergency Fund. "Raging Stallion is a strong supporter of safe sex on video," he says, "and we do not film any bareback or unsafe anal intercourse."

Model-turned-director Sam Dixon says he has taken flak within the industry for oral cumshots he included in Tribal Pulse's Texas Twinks: Highway Hooky (2002), but that customer response has been overwhelmingly favorable. The most memorable scene, shot with a hand-held camera, could almost pass for documentary footage of a five-way encounter in a cruising spot. Servicing four young men in a patch of brush, Dixon himself is the recipient of several jets of spooge.

"There was no discussion about whether or not we were going to do oral cumshots," says Dixon, "the models just went for it, and so did I.... In real life, most men like cum. Depicting cum-eating on film has an intimate, primal appeal."

Dixon notes that the medical consensus on oral sex seems to be that "unless you have a sore in your mouth, you're pretty much just generally at risk for STDs." Even Jonathan Fielding, LA's Director of Public Health, has confessed uncertainty about the risk involved in oral sex. In any case, Dixon feels that safety ought to be a matter of personal choice.

Breeder reaction

Certain studios-- Titan Media, All Worlds Video, and others-- have announced that they will not hire anyone with unprotected sex scenes in his résumé. Chi Chi LaRue, who said at least as far back as 1998 that he would quit the industry if barebacking became acceptable, has now announced that he will not cast models who have appeared in bareback videos.

"There's a real double standard," Dixon observes. "A lot of the people who preach safer sex aren't practicing it in their personal lives. Barebacking is a very real part of the industry, and models are doing it voluntarily. Big, old-school companies are now having to compete with little companies that allow barebacking and other forms of uninhibited sex."

Kayden Scott, one of the models in Texas Twinks, is the recipient of an especially graphic condomless fuck in the 2004 Tipo Sesso video Barebacking Across America. Titles like Bareback Ranch, Bareback Shack, and Takin' It Raw have proliferated over the past two years. Some companies, including Tipo Sesso and Hot Desert Knights, have made the absence of condoms their principal selling point.

"It's the drive a man has to shoot his load deep inside another man," reads the PR copy for a recent Treasure Island Media release. "That's what Plantin' Seed is all about: 'Don't pull out, man, shoot it inside me!' The drive to inseminate, the need to breed!"

Porn fans who feel no particular need to breed find the intimacy of condomless sex arousing, but many are turned off by the possibility that bareback scenes may sometimes document actual transmission of HIV. "Those scenes both make me hard and give me the creeps," confesses one longtime collector of gay adult video.

For many years, bareback sex was banned from all but the most marginal gay porn. On the rare occasions when it surfaced in mainstream releases, condomless fucking was usually swathed in disclaimers. Director Philip St. John included a one-on-one bareback scene South Beach Heat (1999), but took pains to assure viewers that the participants were "in a committed monogamous relationship," and that no endorsement of unsafe sex was implied.

"What we're doing on camera shouldn't be interpreted as a model for behavior," Dixon emphasizes. "The adult industry is entertainment, it's fantasy. It shouldn't be looked to as a source of sex education. We should take our cue from the Netherlands and let our children learn about sex from grade one. Education is what enables people to make responsible sexual choices, and sex education in this country is a disgrace."

Many anti-porn crusaders oppose sex education and sexually explicit entertainment with parallel zealotry. Christian moralists, sex-victim cultists, and free-range erotophobes have long ascribed a multitude of harms to both sexual knowledge and sexual expression. The fiction that sex education promotes teenage pregnancy persists. Televangelist Tim LaHaye echoes smut-busting feminists when he advances the whimsical claim that banning sexually explicit material would "reduce forcible rape by 30 to 40 per cent."

AIDS-enabled zealots push past "porn causes rape" and arrive at "porn causes death." Efforts to represent pornography as lethal once relied on urban legend-- "snuff films," myths of ultraviolent SM-- easily exposed as false. But the unequivocal reality of AIDS provided more convincing means of scaring the hell out of people.

For right-wing Christians, HIV/AIDS was a godsend. Indeed, many regard the condition as a retributive scourge hurled at sexual sinners by the Almighty. A significant number of US Christians interpret AIDS as a signpost of the Endtime, a harbinger of the Time of Tribulation-- the epoch of apocalyptic wrath that will conclude with Armageddon. Additional signs that the end is approaching are advances in gay civil rights, the advent of gay marriage, international terrorism, and the availability of sexual entertainment.

The US Justice Department (DOJ) has always had an adversarial relationship with pornographic material, but tensions have intensified under the present Attorney General, John Ashcroft. A devout member of the Assemblies of God, a sect that thrives on Endtime prophecy, Ashcroft, who may be the most reactionary Attorney General in US history, contends that porn, having "strewn its victims from coast to coast," is relentlessly invading American homes, destroying families and promoting disease.

The Ashcroft DOJ has set up a field office where "forensic specialists" analyze porn full time. Ashcroft has hired moral firebrand Bruce Taylor, sometime head of the National Law Center for Children and Families, veteran of more than 700 porn prosecutions, to insure that his cleanup campaign proceeds apace. Prosecutions thus far have been centered in places like Billings, Montana, where obscenity convictions are easily obtained. The DOJ's proposed anti-smut budget for 2005 is $13.8 million.

Besides producers, distributors, and retailers of adult video, the DOJ is poised to prosecute bookstores, internet service providers, hotel chains offering pay-per-view adult movies, and cable companies. This agenda sells especially well to born-again Christians who associate porn with the spread of disease-engendering twisted lust.

"[AIDS] no more proves that certain sexual lifestyles were evil all along than the plagues of past centuries prove it is immoral for people to live around other people," wrote behavioral scientist F.M. Christensen in Pornography: The Other Side (1990). "Consider the fatal diseases that must have been spread in earlier times by the communion chalice. And the Black Plague, which devastated Europe in the thirteenth century, was carried there on ships with crusaders and pilgrims returning from the Holy Land."

Christensen suggests that AIDS "just might make sexual substitutes more important than ever, for using porn is a paradigm of safe sex."

"Safe sex is a cultural intervention that may work entirely within existing cultural economies or may stretch the edges of those economies," stated queer cultural analyst Cindy Patton in a 1991 essay, "but it cannot be imposed from outside without making participants feel ridiculed or even attacked."

The threat of sexual safety imposed from outside now looms over California's adult industry. As Dr. Sharon Mitchell notes, the effect has been to drive some adult film operations underground. Self-motivated sexual safety is also eroded by anger, defiance, and despair. Mitchell notes that condoms were used 17.4 per cent of the time before the James-Roxx crisis. During the crisis, condom use rose to 23 per cent; currently, the figure is 17 per cent.

Assemblyman Koretz's August warning to the porn industry was followed in October by a similar letter from the LA County Health Department. "It feels," says Mitchell, "like a movement for censorship hidden under the banner of health care."