@origen01: also that you for acknowledging this: “Straight porn owes everything to gay porn–barebacking, anal, DPs, and creampies all began on the gay side (as did blowjobs, BTW–see Christopher Hitchens). Plus, if you acknowledge the fact that the average straight porn viewer is also watching an exposed MAN having sex with an exposed woman, you could claim the homophobic jeering is just a sign of psychological projection.” Most male fans of hetero porn would never admit to any of that.

@origen01: thank you for amending that statement. It really was extremely judgmental. But I still hold that blacklisting is an untenable position unless we are going to have spies lurking under the beds of every porn performer. Just enforcing condom-mandatory laws is going to be difficult enough. And I am aware that opposition to crossover performers isn’t new, but it has become far uglier.

For the record, as a consumer I prefer my porn without condoms. At the same time, when you see an industry put the health of talent at risk that has given me a lot of pleasure, you gotta speak up, even if you’re only a consumer.

@Nick: again, get things straight, Exactly ONE commenter called me names on here. ONE. And I won’t mention him by name because he isn’t worth my time. And he called me these names WELL BEFORE I said ANYTHING about Weinstein, which YOU were the only one to object to. His name-calling had absolutely NOTHING to do with that AT ALL. He had first decided I was a bisexual man when I objected to some comments he made re Xander Corvus, so first came the anti-gay epithets. When I explained that I was in fact FEMALE, out came “whore,” “skank,” and “cunt,” and offering to put his dick in my mouth so I’d shut up, and that I obviously “wanted it.” But I “started” it, according to you? You are obviously one of those people who never admits he’s wrong. And YES, many people disagree with you that Weinstein and Hall are “AWESOME” and “heroes”- would you like me to compile a list and include it? But of course, we have the “Nick East is never wrong” rule. Textbook narcissism.

“Why you felt the need to comment that the european porn industry is going to have a ‘windfall’ over our lack of shooting!!! Like we care!!!! Why should we? Answer me that, Sach!!!” AGAIN: BECAUSE I FELT LIKE MAKING THAT OBSERVATION. If you don’t like what I post, feel free to ignore them. I was quite content ignoring your comments until you decided to mock another commenter for daring to have a different opinion. Bored now. Bye.

I want to amend what I said about performers being excessively vice-ridden. That was a really condemning statement. In my own life, I struggle with vice and sin–as does any human–so I really have no ground to stand on.

I’m really sorry and I know blanket discrimination is wrong. I just think people who do high risk acts should be exposed and policed but I’m not trying to get earnest people out of a job.

BT I think a few examples would probably put Vivid’s legal argument into question, including Kira Kener’s lawsuit against them in 2005 in regards to catching an STD from a toy on set and the Mr. Marcus debacle with the visible syphilis lesions on his penis.

I think current employment law would be hard to apply in most legal porn issues. Too many lawsuits on the books where Partner A didn’t disclose to Partner B that they had an STD and Partner B ends up getting it and suing Partner A.

In the business or (real life) world, employers are now checking Facebook pages, doing search engines searches etc… before hiring an employee, which if the employer found out a guy they might hire regularly works in gay porn it would be a way to not hire them without actually telling them and pass it off as “we went with someone else”.

I don’t think there can ever be any kind of universal testing in all genres of porn, but the “we can regulate ourselves” argument has become laughable.

My comment about the 3 performers didn’t have anything to do with a legal point, moreover a general comment, but I don’t think for a minute that a producer wouldn’t cross out a performer if they saw his photo on the agent’s website. If what Wyson said was true about what Howard said, I think it’s deplorable.

NicaNoelle wrote that there a number of performers that shoot straight that are bi or gay in their private lives. Considering the current climate, I could not imagine wanting to work in the current environment.

For some it’s a gay/straight issue, but for me it’s all about the testing or in the case of the gay industry a lack there of. I agree though that neither side can be proud of their testing history protocols. Two diseases that are almost never part of the discussion are genital herpes and the over 100 different forms of HPV. The last time I checked both had life long affects and weren’t cheap to treat.

The porn industry has veered towards more extreme sex acts but hasn’t done much to adjust their testing to that change.

Who disagrees with me, Sach? Michael Weinstein is AWESOME and so is Isadore Hall!!!! Before you go accusing others of calling names, remember that you started it!!!! look at the timeline and you’ll see distinctly that people calling YOU names only started AFTER you called Weinstein a ‘tool’! And when are you going to explain why european porn profits should mean as much as a hill of beans to us here in America, please? Why you felt the need to comment that the european porn industry is going to have a ‘windfall’ over our lack of shooting!!! Like we care!!!! Why should we? Answer me that, Sach!!!

Sachertorte, think about it. The typical guy who is having frequent gay sex for money is not the kind of guy who has never been to a bathhouse. This is a vice industry. Virtuous people are in the minority. Most performers are either excessively flaky, greedy, deceitful, cruel, ignorant, depraved or a combination of some or all of these traits. I love performers and it doesn’t make them evil, per se, but this is the sad reality. Performers don’t care about living good, decent, and non-reckless lives because to them “good” is whatever the fuck makes them happy.

In anthropology there is a term used for a type of non-quantitative analysis called thick description. You want studies to back up the presence of HIV in bareback gay porn? You’re not going to find them. What do think this is, the university library? This is porn–an Industry where a significant amount of transactions occur under the table and in a clandestine manner. But several commentators on the gay porn industry have noted the presence of the disease. Read the story of Mason Wyler.

Homophobia on boards like LIB, XPT, and MikeSouth is just childish squealing. I honestly don’t even pay attention to it. Straight porn owes everything to gay porn–barebacking, anal, DPs, and creampies all began on the gay side (as did blowjobs, BTW–see Christopher Hitchens). Plus, if you acknowledge the fact that the average straight porn viewer is also watching an exposed MAN having sex with an exposed woman, you could claim the homophobic jeering is just a sign of psychological projection.

I stand by my support for blacklisting crossovers who perform CONCURRENTLY on both sides of the Industry. You cannot police every performer’s private life, but it would help. Numerous people (a la Den of Den’s Reviews) would be more than glad to scour content and the internet to “out” crossover performers and male escorts. I would definitely make a difference. If Rod Daily would have been blacklisted, he would have never had a chance to infect Cameron Bay. I know, at this point the previous statement is speculation but time will reveal all.

This opposition to crossover performers is not new. For many years there was a veteran pornographer named The Colonel who posted on LukeFord.com and LukeisBack.com. He voice some truly wise words concerning this topic. See the article and comment section:

http://www.lukeisback.com/2009/06/the-colonel-weighs-in-on-the-new-hiv-outbreak/

First, porn’s legal argument is that condoms are not required in the industry because testing works. Period.

The Vivid suit does not make a distinction between heterosexual porn and homosexual porn.

It does not make a distinction between what a performer does on set and what a performer does off set in their personal life.

Porn argues that testing is sufficient to catch STDs – however and wherever they were acquired, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of the performers off-screen activities. Jennifer White wants to do a 50-man anal creampie with anyone and everyone? No worries. Our system is effective.

Remember a male performer could choose to only perform straight scenes in his professional life and be gay as Liberace in his personal life, including having bareback anal sex with his partner who turns out to have an STD the morning of a shoot.

Similarly, female talent could be a paragon of professional virtue on set have bareback anal sex in her personal life with her boyfriend, the bisexual, needle-sharing wannabe fashion model who is never tested because he’s not part of the industry. Or, she might bareback the day before a scene during an escort appointment with an otherwise straight businessman who occasionally takes a walk on the wild side with a male prostitute.

If testing works, it must work in all of those scenarios or the justification falls apart because porn can’t control who decides to enter the industry.

For all the shouting from the bleachers about First Amendment rights by James Deen, read the Vivid suit and the Judge’s decision. Vivid makes little mention of the First Amendment and what mention it did make was rejected by the Judge as not likely to prevail. Porn’s real argument was that this is an unnecessary intrusion into the industry’s business practices because the testing system works.

From an employment law standpoint, an employer is allowed to administer tests as a condition of employment. You can test for alcohol and drugs. You can do a criminal background check. You can even do a financial check. And, in porn, you can do an STD check.

However, an employer is not legally allowed to investigate the off-set sexual lives of potential employees.

Porn is not allowed to investigate who an actress chooses to live with or what she chooses to do in her off-screen life.

The fact that three infected actors share an agent isn’t a variable that has anything to do with whether testing works or the industry should use condoms. Again, an effective system doesn’t care.

The fact that female talent chooses not to perform with certain male talent, for whatever reason, is a different issue from producers having two sets of criteria for hiring talent with a clean test that clears them to work under the industry protocols.

As employees, you and I can choose not to accept work for any reason at all. An actress could choose not to accept a scene with a specific male actor because she doesn’t like the socks he wore in the last scene she viewed.

An employer, cannot establish the criteria that qualifies someone to work – a clean bill of health – and then establish a second set of criteria that discriminates against individuals who otherwise meet the qualifications for the job. You cannot say a clean bill of health is the criteria for performing in a scene, but we will not work with you because you may not have a clean bill of health in the future. That could apply to any talent, not just cross-over talent.

@Nick: you’re really equating calling a PUBLIC FIGURE a “tool” exactly ONCE with one particularly crude commenter on a blog personally attacking another commenter with the far worse epithets of “whore,” “skank,” and “cunt”?? And calling a male commenter “faggot” repeatedly?? You really do live in your own little world. So you think Weinstein is “AWESOME.” Sure he’ll be pleased to know that. Many disagree with you.