Porn Industry Threatens to Ditch LA

Next stop, New Hampshire? A Los Angeles law requiring porn actors to wear condoms when filming on location takes effect next month and angry producers are threatening to pull up stakes and take away an industry that provides up to 20,000 jobs. The law is "a nuisance more than anything else. We will continue shooting the movies, and if that means outside of the city of Los Angeles, so be it," one producer tells the Los Angeles Times. AIDS activists are trying to persuade neighboring cities to adopt similar condom laws.

"This is the first step of government overreach into the way we make movies," complains the director of a porn industry lobby group. "It's clearly the government interfering where it really doesn't belong." She believes other states would welcome the industry. Some have suggested Nevada, but the industry would be certain to meet political resistance—and the state's legal brothels require condoms. The only state besides California that has decided porn producers shouldn't be prosecuted under anti-prostitution laws is New Hampshire.