Why Is Rod Daily Lobbying For Mandatory Condoms In Porn?
This week, AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s Michael Weinstein flew HIV-positive former porn stars Rod Daily and Cameron Bay up to Sacramento to testify at the AB1576 hearing. The legislation cleared the Labor and Employment committee by a 5-0 vote, and it now proceeds to another committee for another vote. If signed into law, AB1576 would mandate condom use and STD testing for all porn performers and productions statewide.
What’s completely unclear is how this would affect HIV-positive performers currently working in the industry. (According to the bill’s author, Isadore Hall, HIV-positive performers would not be barred from working, which would be discrimination. So then what’s the point of forcing them to take an HIV test every 14 days?) What’s even more unclear is how Rod Daily’s testimony in favor of AB1576 is remotely germane to a mandatory condom law. Daily, as everyone knows, worked exclusively in condom-only porn, so even if Hall/AHF’s bill were law when Daily was a performer, it would have done absolutely nothing to have prevented him from becoming HIV-positive. And Daily’s girlfriend, Cameron Bay, was routinely STD tested before each of her shoots, so even if mandatory testing were in place, it would have done nothing to have prevented her from becoming HIV-positive. It’s clear that neither Bay nor Daily contracted HIV on an adult film set, and it’s common knowledge that they both worked as escorts in their personal lives.
Former porn stars who happen to have become HIV-positive due to activities off set aren’t relevant to a debate over workplace safety, but if Daily and Bay are willing to be exploited by AHF (and presumably paid for that exploitation), far be it from me to judge.
Here’s the section of the bill that would impact adult films (full text here):
(A) Each time an employee performing in an adult film engaged in vaginal or anal intercourse, personal protective equipment was used to protect the employee from exposure to bloodborne pathogens. This paragraph shall not be construed to require that the personal protective equipment be visible to the consumer in the finished film.
(B) Each employee performing in an adult film was tested for sexually transmitted infections, according to the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the State Department of Public Health current at the time the testing takes place, not less than 14 days prior to filming any scene in which the employee engaged in vaginal or anal intercourse and that the employer paid for the test.
