AIDS Healthcare Makes False Claims In Prop 60 Ad

LOS ANGELES—Last evening, the television ad aimed at convincing California voters to pass Prop 60, the so-called "Safer Sex In The Adult Film Industry Act," aired for the first time—and almost needless to say, it contained at least two big lies. The ad's face is that of Cameron Adams, formerly adult actress Cameron Bay, looking nothing like she did in her porn days, and the ad's opening image shows a greyed-out background that is obviously supposed to be a porn set, overlaid with the caption, 'PORNOGRAPHERS MAKE BIG PROMISES'." "I heard their big promises, but after just three months on the job, all I got was HIV," Adams begins, implying that she contracted her infection on an adult set, which everyone in the adult industry knows to be false. After claiming that "California law already requires adult film performers to wear condoms"—which it doesn't, or there'd be no need for Prop 60—Adams continues, "but porn producers bully the actors not to use them and they get away with it. Prop 60 will close loopholes in the existing law, the same law all major medical groups have supported." Indeed; the ad lists support by four supposed "major medical groups": the California State Association of Occupational Nurses (whose website is practically devoid of any information, much less regarding condom use in adult), the California Academy of Preventative Medicine (one of whose past presidents is the rabidly anti-industry Dr. Peter Kerndt), the American Sexual Health Association, and Beyond AIDS (whose advisory council includes Dr. Kerndt as well as Dr. Jeffrey D. Klausner and Nurse Denise Bleak, all of whom have pushed for mandatory condom use at Cal/OSHA meetings)—and none of whom have any knowledge of the day-to-day life of the adult industry. On the other hand, groups that have lent their names to the "No on 60" campaign include the California Democratic Party, the California Republican Party, the California Libertarian Party, and civil rights and public health organizations including Equality California, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, AIDS Project LA, the Los Angeles LGBTQ Center, the Los Angeles Commission on HIV, and the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee (APAC), the largest independent performer organization in the industry—and who better knows what performers go through in their duties than APAC? The full ad can be seen here.