California Lawmakers Want Porn Stars to Wear Safety Goggles

California’s workplace safety guardians have proposed an
amendment to a bill that would
require porn stars to wear protective goggles while
filming.

The bill, which has so far
stalled in the state senate, establishes numerous mandates for
the porn industry to follow with the goal of curbing the spread of
sexually transmitted diseases. Among these mandates is the
requirement that “personal protective equipment” be used to
“prevent contact of an employee’s eye, skin, mucous membranes, or
genitals with the blood or OPIM-STI of another.” (OPIM-STI
includes pre-ejaculate, semen, vaginal secretions, and fecal
matter.)

According to the
bill, which was originally posted on a NSFW
adult entertainment blog:

The employer shall provide, at no cost to the employee,
appropriate personal protective equipment such as, but not limited
to, condoms, gloves for cleaning, and, if contact of the eyes with
OPIM-STI is reasonably anticipated, eye protection.

So basically, cum shots sans eyegear would be illegal.

The bill would also require employees to wear condoms during
vaginal and anal sex, gloves when touching “contaminated laundry,”
and create a specific exemption for condom wearing during oral sex
to be reviewed in January 2018.  

Porn actors are actually already required to follow these rules,

says Deborah Gold, the deputy chief for health of California’s
Division of Occupational Safety and Health. They just rarely do. In
an interview with Salon, Gold said that “these draft
guidelines are an attempt to tailor existing workplace-safety rules
relating to blood-borne pathogens specifically to the adult
industry.”

The bill follows in the footsteps of last year’s 
Safer Sex in the Adult Film Industry Act (or Measure B),
the much-discussed, voter-approved measure that requires porn
actors in Los Angeles County to wear condoms on set.

James Deen, an
award-winning porn star and a staunch opponent of condom
mandates,
spoke with the Huffington Post
after the measure passed:

“It will be interesting to see what happens next. People will
most likely move production out of Los Angeles and take out tax
money with us. Hopefully this measure passing will help us [adult
entertainers] get more organized in the future and that, along with
Los Angeles losing our business, will allow people in politics to
start seeing us as an asset.”

There’s evidence that Deen’s prediction came true: After the
measure passed, the number of requests for porn production permits
in Los Angeles
dropped from an annual norm of 500 to two. Now it appears that
California politicians are looking to implement even more expansive
protective barrier mandates. 

In a satirical video protesting Measure B, James Deen and
co-star Jessica Drake show what a scene with mandatory safety
goggles and latex barriers everywhere could look like. NSFW! You’ve
been warned. Watch it after the jump.