The Latest Porn-Unfriendly Place: Unincorporated Ventura County

VENTURA, Calif.—It stretches from roughly Topanga Canyon Boulevard on the southeast to where Route 150 meets the Pacific Coast Highway on the northwest, and now this 1845 square mile patch of land has become the latest California community to officially become unfriendly to the adult entertainment industry. In other words, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors has today unanimously passed the "mandatory condom" ordinance introduced in late April by County Supervisor Linda Parks (R-District 2). The ordinance will take effect immediately. Parks allegedly sponsored the ordinance, whose text was unavailable at press time, after she had been contacted by residents of Newbury Park who complained that they could "hear and see the sex scenes" being shot at a home in the unincorporated neighborhood of Ventu Park. The County Board of Supervisors is not the first Ventura County body to have passed a "mandatory condom" ordinance (though how much more than condoms are required will depend on the text of the ordinance). The city of Simi Valley recently passed an ordinance similar to the one adopted by the City of Los Angeles late last year, but with the added requirements that an on-site health care professional monitor the condom use, and that the producer submit a copy of the finished production to the Simi Valley Police Department to confirm compliance. Thousand Oaks, while lacking a specific ordinance related to adult filming, nonetheless has a requirement that any production company planning to shoot in the city obtain an agreement to the shoot from 90 percent of neighbors within 200 feet of the filming site. And finally, the city of Camarillo in late March enacted a 45-day moratorium on any adult filming in the city—a moratorium that is up for extension within the next few days. Of course, it's not surprising that there's been so much anti-adult sentiment in the county. Of Ventura County's roughly 800,000 residents, 49.3 percent of its registered voters were Republicans according to the 2010 census, though the county did marginally favor Barack Obama in the 2008 and 2012 elections. Unknown is whether AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which successfully petitioned both the city and county of Los Angeles to enact "barrier protection" ordinances, had had any contact either with Parks to write the just-enacted ordinance and/or with other supervisors to lobby in favor of its passage.