XXX: Is the Porn Industry Doomed?

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A former senior vice president for Planned Parenthood of Southwestern Oregon, Duke is now based in California's San Fernando Valley but plans on coming to Washington, D.C., a few times over the next year to push the Free Speech Coalition's agenda with lawmakers. "I won't be giving you any names!" she jokes. Apparently, this lobbying effort comes wrapped in a brown paper bag.

In the meantime, Duke has her hands full in California, where the state Assembly recently floated a bill that would have required all adult-film actors to don condoms. The issue pitted Duke against her former employer; Planned Parenthood, of course, is all about promoting condom usage to the masses.

Porn is about fantasy, though, so Duke says condoms -- which might remind viewers of unsexy topics like disease and pregnancy -- should be kept out of the picture. Adult-industry performers are regularly tested for sexually transmitted infections and expected to show up on set with paperwork declaring a clean bill of health. (This system hasn't always worked: In 2004, the industry suffered an outbreak of HIV.) Plus, condoms might make filming difficult, Duke says. "I'm very much pro-safe sex and pro-family planning," she swears. "But you've got eight hours of filming, and lights, and heat, so it's a very different atmosphere than it would be for people in general." (Isn't that what Viagra is for?) Not to mention, of course, "a lot of the demand is for films without condoms." If the Golden State ever did require condoms in skin flicks, the porn industry would likely pack up and leave town. And since the adult industry accounts for about 50,000 jobs in California -- only 10 percent of which are acting in the films -- the economic crisis probably precludes the state from such moral posturing.

But while porn's spokespeople defend their business as an economic stimulator, some adult-industry stalwarts are less sympathetic to the travails of other uniquely American industries. A few weeks after demanding a bailout, Flynt admitted the whole thing was a farce. "When we asked for the bailout for the porn industry, I didn't hold my breath, because I knew it wasn't coming," he said in a March 3 interview with MSNBC. Flynt's libertarian point, it seems, was that automakers don't deserve bailouts, either -- those 3 million jobs be damned.

The porn industry's lobbying efforts may not be ideologically consistent, but at least they are consistently amusing. Duke, though, urges readers to stay serious. "Protecting our freedoms and civil rights is all that we ask," she says. "When we stigmatize sex, it becomes such a driving political issue. It's very unfortunate because it ruins something that should be wonderful and beautiful for people."

Reprinted with permission from Dana Goldstein, "The XXX-Files" The American Prospect, Volume 20, Number 4: May 1st, 2009. www.prospect.org, 1710 Rhode Island Avenue, NW, 4th Floor, Washington DC, 20036.