Totally Predictable Consequence of LA County Condom Porn Mandate Gets Totally Predictable Call to Do More by Nanny Staters

Last November, voters in Los Angeles County
approved a measure requiring the use of condoms on the set of
pornos shot in the county. Predictably, the mandate was quickly
challenged in a lawsuit, both for the broad powers of enforcement
and
on free speech grounds. Over the summer, a court rejected the
free speech claim but
did rule to narrow the powers of health inspectors tasked with
targeting porn sets, requiring, among other things, warrants and
judicial review. The county did not appeal the ruling.
Nevertheless, some porn companies have been driven out of LA,

and California altogether, and permit requests in Los Angeles
county have plummeted. The Huffington Post
reports:

The LA County Department of Public Health told HuffPost
that 11 porn companies have been issued public health permits since
January. And yet there are many more adult film organizations in
LA, where an estimated 90 percent of porn movies in the
U.S. are made.

Industry insiders say that many adult film companies have not
applied for public health permits, adding that even those who have
a public health permit have yet to be inspected by the county.
County officials did not respond to HuffPost’s inquiry as to
whether the department has conducted any inspections of porn
sets.

So it could be that porn producers are still in LA and just filming
without either public health or film permits. That’s what Michael
Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, thinks is
happening, even though industry officials like [Free Speech
Coalition CEO Diane] Duke insist otherwise.

Weinstein, who authored the condom mandate, has been very
critical of LA County for not enforcing the law. Without
enforcement, porn companies don’t feel the need to use condoms on
set, Weinstein said to HuffPost.

“Would people speed more,” he added, “if they knew they wouldn’t
get caught?”

Weinstein refuses to acknowledge the civil liberties
implications of his puritan nanny state
crusade. When the county declined to appeal the court’s ruling on
the condom mandate, Weinstein
told the Huffington Post that county officials “obviously have
a callous disregard to the will of 1.6 million voters… The
department is bureaucratic and lazy. They want to do as little as
possible.”

Weinstein and his fellow crusaders, though, want to do as much
as possible to drive porn out of Los Angeles, and California, as
possible,
with state lawmakers looking at regulations that would require
the use of safety goggles on porn sets where contact with bodily
fluids is likely (all of them?).  Supporters and fetishists of
porn regulation and enforcement look ever more likely to regulate
and enforce the entire industry completely out of their reach.

Reason TV previewed the condom mandate last year: