CALIFORNIANS: VOTE NO ON PROP 60

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This November 8, Californians will vote on a controversial ballot initiative — Prop 60 — that will allow any state resident to sue an adult performer who appears in a film where a condom isn’t visible.

Eric Paul Leue, a longtime HIV/AIDS activist, a former Mr. LA Leather, the current campaign manager for No on 60, Californians Against Worker Harassment, recently wrote about the dangers of such a law for The Advocate. We’ve excerpted parts of the article here. (You can read it at full at Advocate.com. We ask that you share it widely, and — if you are a Californian — to VOTE NO ON PROP 60 and help spread the word by visiting www.dontharassca.com,

Prop. 60 is the latest gambit by Michael Weinstein, the controversial founder of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Many may remember Weinstein and AHF for misleading campaigns against PrEP, sex-shaming billboards, and hyperbolic attacks on Grindr, Tinder, and Viagra. But Prop. 60, his fourth attempt to impose new laws on the adult film industry in California, may be the most misguided campaign yet …

Weinstein says he’s targeting “greedy pornographers,” but when it comes to Prop. 60, his most vocal opponents have been the performers themselves. That’s because, under Prop. 60, anyone who produces, sells, or profits from adult films — a group that now includes the majority of performers — will be subject to lawsuits and fines if a condom isn’t visible…

Under Prop. 60, anyone in California who doesn’t see condoms in an adult film can sue a performer personally and receive a portion of any fine imposed.

As an outspoken member of the LGBTQ community and an HIV activist, I see something frightening in Prop. 60. Imagine stalkers, overzealous fans, angry family members, and LGBTQ hate groups being able to obtain legal names and home addresses of people who are open about their sexuality and gender identity. Performers already face daily privacy invasions, harassment, and discrimination — a law giving a digital mob incentives to patrol sexual behavior should raise flags with all LGBTQ people everywhere.

This is one of the reasons why the list of those opposing Prop. 60 includes LGBTQ stalwarts like Equality California, AIDS Project Los Angeles, the Los Angeles LGBT Center, the Transgender Law Center, and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Not to mention both the California Democratic and Republican parties.

Those who remember when Michael Weinstein called PrEP a “party drug” know that AHF is not a friend of sexual freedom and science; the proposition removes the control over safer-sex practices from the performers themselves and places it in the hands of any resident of California. As a long time HIV activist, I can tell you that an effective approach to HIV prevention is not and has never been one-size-fits-all. Criminalizing sexual behavior only worsens health outcomes …

This is something that gay men may know implicitly. Those of us who lived through the epidemic, who lost friends and watched other struggle with HIV, know that moralizing, shaming, and stigma only made things worse. As a community, we’re still dealing with the after-effects of three decades of homophobia, sexphobia, AIDS-phobia, and HIV criminalization.

Unfortunately, we’re seeing these forces rise again in relation to adult performers. Weinstein has called the adult performers “a public health crisis” and stoked fears that they are bringing sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, into the larger population. There’s no evidence to support that — in fact, adult performers are possibly the most regularly tested population on earth, and there hasn’t been an on-set HIV transmission in the regulated adult industry since 2004. But why should AHF let facts get in the way?

Many in the industry have long speculated that the true focus of Prop. 60 is not about performers but those watching the videos at home. Given Weinstein’s public statements — and his willingness to ally himself with fringe antiporn figures — I wouldn’t be surprised. But porn is not a substitute for sex education, any more than The Fast and the Furious is a replacement for driver’s ed, and it’s incredibly irresponsible to sacrifice performer safety for a morals campaign.

What Prop. 60 threatens to do is not only demonize but destabilize — to push production underground and out of state, to make performers vulnerable to harassment and lawsuits, to take away control over their own bodies.

Despite the safeguards of the current system, we can and should always work to improve safety for adult performers. But to do it effectively, you need to involve the performers themselves, to listen to their concerns, to give options and build a system that works from the bottom up.

Prop. 60 does not do any of those things, and I hope that come November, California voters will join me in defeating this noxious, dangerous measure. Vote no on Proposition 60.

For more information, or to get involved, visit: www.dontharassca.com

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