Should Porn Stars Be Forced to Wear Condoms?

Chad Noel was an adult film star, 25-years-old, from the somewhat iconic town of Laramie, Wyoming (the town where Matthew Shepard was murdered in 1998 in a prominent anti-gay hate crime that eventually led to passage of federal hate crimes provisions protecting sexual orientation and gender identity). Noel became popular in the gay porn industry for filming a number of "bareback" sex scenes — scenes where men have unprotected anal sex.

In March 2010, Noel died. The cause of death? A brief illness associated with complications from HIV, at least according to official reports.

Noel's death opened up a can of worms about "barebacking" in the gay adult film industry. Can it ever be safe? Can the adult film industry be trusted to patrol itself when it comes to making sure performers are HIV-negative? Are consumers who purchase or watch "barebacking" porn culpable in fostering a climate where sexually transmitted diseases can flourish?

Yes, these questions all existed before Noel's death. And as a commenter on Gay Porn Gossip put it in the wake of Noel's death, it's hard to know whether Noel contracted HIV through doing barebacking porn. "I think it's unfair and entirely disingenuous to start screaming from the rooftops that if he didn't do bareback porn, he wouldn't have contracted HIV," said commenter sayencrowolf (site here, very NSFW). "In truth, Chad will probably be the only one that knows the moment he contracted it, or the behaviour he was employing that left him open to transmission."

Perhaps that's true. But there's also no denying that barebacking porn certainly fetishizes a sexual practice that leaves people vulnerable to STDs. That's a point underscored by Mark S. King, who wrote about Noel's death for Poz.com.

"Has my gay community longed for a pre-AIDS sexual reality so desperately that treatment advances have swept us back to a time when unprotected sex was without horrific consequences?" King asked his readers. "Has porn made barebacking such a fetish that “use a condom every time” can’t compete with oily close-ups of condomless sex?"

These are all complicated questions. But in California, they're about to take center stage, because a state advisory panel is taking up the issue of whether it should be made mandatory that porn stars (gay porn and straight porn) wear condoms.

A number of groups believe this is the way to go. Among them include the American Medical Association, which just adopted a measure supporting efforts to make condom use mandatory in adult films. That had Michael Weinstein, the President of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, very pleased.

"This is another tremendous step forward in the right direction toward protecting the health and safety of adult film workers, and I want to thank AMA officials for their official vote on this,” said Weinstein. "The adult film industry has steadfastly refused to take any steps to protect its workers from diseases spread by bloodborne pathogens, resulting in thousands of employees becoming infected with sexually transmitted diseases. We need to take the necessary steps to protect performers by providing and enforcing the use of condoms during filming so that actors in adult films enjoy the same public health and workplace protections that all workers should."

Some within the adult film industry, for their part, say that they already have policies in place to protect against STD-transmission. These include mandatory monthly HIV tests that all actors must undergo to be given permission to film. Additionally, these same folks say that taking a big brother approach to condom use will only force "barebacking" porn underground, where no policies will exist to keep actors safe.

So what's the right thing to do here? Personally, I'm stumped. As much as a universal condom policy makes sense to me, and as much as I disagree that a business can patrol itself effectively (it can't, whether it's the banking industry or the adult film industry), I can see the concern about barebacking porn being sent underground. That's why I kind of like what Bilerico's Adam Bink had to say about this subject. His advice for advocates? Maybe it's time to meet the consumers and producers of barebacking porn where they are, instead of where we want them to be.

"There will always be consumers of bareback porn, and one way to organize may be to work with that community by meeting its members where they are, instead of where they would be in an ideal world," Bink writes.

And I think that's some pretty sage advice.

Photo credit: ElPablo!