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OSHA: No Mandatory Condoms or Goggles for Porn

By Jonathan R. Tung, Esq. on February 19, 2016 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

California's Occupation Safety and Health Administration rejected a proposal to force all pornographic actors and actresses in the state to widespread use of condoms, gloves, and ... "eye protection." OSHA officials only secured three votes -- just one short in order to have made the proposal law.

The hearing lasted more than five hours as regulators and industry bigwigs gathered in Oakland to hear arguments for and against the proposal.

Golden State: Porn Capital

It turns out that our fair state is actually #1 when it comes to producing pornography. Despite massive online piracy and plummeting DVD sales, California's San Fernando Valley has been the place to go for any aspiring actor who wanted to make a name for himself in this most primal of industries. But even despite local rules like L.A.'s Safer Sex in the Adult Film Industry Act, porn is still a profitable business.

Mandatory Condoms Will "Endanger Me"

Adult actress Maxine Halloway pleaded with the board not to pass a policy "that will endanger me and my colleagues." Presumably, she felt that mandatory condoms would enable producers to become lax on existing safety measures that now require STD testing every fourteen days.

Opponents of the proposal pointed out that the regulation would tend to drive the industry underground in order to meet the demand by consumers. "Like it or not, there is a very real market demand for condomless sex," said one woman who identified herself as a sex-worker.

Eric Leue, a spokesperson for the Free Speech Coalition (which is really a porn advocacy group) pointed out that the regulation would have the tendency to make pornography seem ridiculous. "[w]e're talking about gloves, full body cover and goggles," he said. "It's going to turn into surgical porn."

Like No Other Good

Studies of pornography consumption habits and tastes are somewhat skewed by the fact that pornography is not like many other goods that can be bought readily at the local market -- or even through most channels online. People generally do not want other people knowing of their consumption of pornography, so sales and consumption numbers are only as accurate as online vendors' reporting of those numbers.

Despite this setback, proponents have said that they will work with CalOSHA to implement alternative measures to address what some see as real safety hazards inherent in the industry.

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