Owner of Cocky Boys, Kyle Majors, has published an open letter coming out in support of mandatory testing and condom use for California-based porn studios.
In light of an HIV outbreak in straight porn studios this summer, the California government's considering regulating the porn industry to ensure it doesn't happen again. Kyle's all for it and writes an articulate, well-reasoned defense of his position:
CockyBoys has been AIM testing almost since we started AND requiring condom usage. We pay for the AIM tests, not the models. And, we are not alone. Many web-based studios have required testing and condom usage for a long time. Bait Bus, Randyblue, NextDoorMale and Suite 703 require AIM testing. Sean Cody and Collegedudes247 require HIV testing...
I am sick and tired of the DVD and bareback guys whining over this issue. This is a situation where the industry should have banded together and self-regulated. There might have been some means of establishing "truly informed consent" that could co-exist with testing. That didn't happen. Now the only state in the Union where producing porn is clearly legal is considering government regulation - it's policing an area where the industry failed to police itself. CockyBoys approached a couple of the pro-condom DVD studios a year or so ago about creating an industry trade association and we were privately told to "not rock the boat" over bareback content. Now the government is stepping in, and frankly, it's about time.
Far from being an absolutist or self-promoting, Kyle acknowledges that condoms and testing can still be insufficient to protect porn models. He also says that even studios that use condoms have an obligation to inform their models about the real HIV-risks involved with acts (like oral cumshots and pissing in one's eyes) and to not spread untrue health information in the interest of quickly shooting a scene.
He also raises two interesting arguments in his letter. First, he equates bareback sex with selling your kidneys for cash:
There are tons of examples where the government protects us from doing something potentially dangerous for money. If you can't sell a kidney or a lung for money, it seems to me you shouldn't be able to engage in unsafe sex for money either.
But there are lots of examples where the government's completely willing to look the other way—the alcohol, sports, and war industries, for example—so that argument doesn't entirely hold water. Next he says that the gay porn industry already has more HIV+ porn stars than it thinks, making testing and condoms absolutely essential to preventing the spread of the virus:
In an insightful piece written for TheSword.com entitled, "Pornstars to Producers: Condoms Not Enough," the author highlights models' genuine concerns over the risks and the general lack of communication by studios regarding potential STD exposures. The article states that 30% of gay adult models are HIV positive. I suspect that number may be higher viewed on a studio-by-studio basis.
We're wondering how far Kyle's willing to go to keep the industry safe. Though he doesn't call for it, would it be best to not use HIV+ models at all? Should HIV+ models only be paired in scenes with other HIV+ men?
During the summer we wrote extensively about barebacking so we won't recount all the arguments and complexities here. We will applaud Kyle for working to keep porn models safe; that's something we can all agree on. We also agree that studios should be responsible for ensuring their models safety and should pay for the testing.
We also acknowledge, however, that bareback porn is a niche market that's not going away. If California decides to start regulating the industry, bareback studios will either relocate or go underground possibly making the practice even more dangerous. Kyle says that if millions of porn dollars are gonna leave California and bareback elsewhere, then maybe the feds should regulate porn nationwide. But that's a bit drastic and unlikely, we think. Obama's not even touching any gay issues, does anyone really think he'd stick his fist into the gaping butt hole that is gay porn?
We realize how high passions run on both sides of this issue. Even if pro-condom studios formed an alliance to support safe sex efforts in porn, it would draw a clear political line between studios and might even re-instate the blackballing of actors who decide to cross that line. Where would studios that do both condom and bareback scenes (like Corbin Fisher and Chaos Men) fall in that continuum? The social stakes are high and so are the profits and loyalties.
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