As was expected, while the adult film industry gathers in Las Vegas for the annual Adult Entertainment Expo this week, The Los Angeles City Council took the opportunity to affirm last week’s preliminary vote to allow the mandatory condom initiative on adult film production from AIDS Healthcare Foundation to go into law.

For over a year, AHF has been waging a war against the adult industry in LA, ostensibly over health and safety issues, but more accurately as a combination of power-grabbing and moralising. Their infamous lawsuits, threats and misinformation campaigns forced the closure of Sharon Mitchell’s long-established and successful AIM Healthcare, since 1998 the central point for the US adult industry to have monthly HIV tests. The power grab began with the most recent outbreak of HIV, which – as usual – had been expertly handled by AIM, with performers quarantined and the threat contained. In fact, it’s notable that despite having unprotected sex with multiple partners regularly, very few adult performers have been diagnosed with HIV – and most, if not all of those who were contracted the infection through off-set activity. This would suggest that the current regime was working well. But that meant nothing to AHF, who have bulldozered their campaign, aided by politicians who had shown little previous interest in employee safety regulations.

As industry insiders have pointed out, mandatory condom use doesn’t guarantee safety, especially if having a clean HIV test is no longer mandatory and the new laws won’t stop cum-shots. And as this legislation is LA-based only, it won’t stop producers moving out of the city, or less scrupulous studios simply going underground. Whatever the result, performers will not be safer – if anything, quite the opposite. But then, this was never really about safety.

This probably isn’t the end of the matter – the new law is legally dubious, and is bound to be challenged. Hopefully successfully.