US Sex Sells News

Porn company Vivid has failed in its appeal against a recent Californian move to mandate condoms in porn production.

The company had made a constitutional challenge to a 2012 California ballot initiative that paved the way for the new law. Vivid argued that the measure violated a First Amendment free speech right to have unprotected sex on camera.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit disagreed. Judge Susan Graber wrote: 

The condom mandate has only a de minimus effect on expression, is narrowly tailored to achieve the substantial government interest of reducing the rate of sexually transmitted infections, and leaves open adequate alternative means of expression.

The requirement that actors in adult films wear condoms while engaging in sexual intercourse might have 'some minimal effect' on a film's erotic message, but that effect is certainly no greater than the effect of pasties and G-strings on the erotic message of nude dancing.

The ruling paves the way for the measure to be enforced, although the number of permits for the production of pornographic films has declined already in Los Angeles County.

Interestingly Los Angeles County refused to defend the law in court, prompting sponsors of the measure, namely the anti porn campaigners, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, to intervene.

Fans and veteran stars of adult movies turned out at a book launch to honor classic adult actress Serena, as she discussed her new memoir, Bright Lights, Lonely Nights , recently published by BearManor Bare.

Veteran actor and activist William Margold set the stage for Serena's talk by recalling that he'd met the lithe blonde 41 years earlier:

I went downstairs to perform with two women for one of Sam's hardcore shootings, and when I walked in, Serena was there but there was another woman who worked with me, and Serena sort of watched. When it was over, Serena, without even attempting to put her clothes on, came over and hugged me.

The result of the hug was that Margold and Serena began to treat each other as brother and sister, a relationship that carries through to today.

When it came Serena's turn to speak, she admitted that much of her early life is now a blank to her. She went on to describe her periods of mania and depression, mood swings that didn't abate until she started taking antipsychotic drugs, though Margold opined that it was those mood swings that made her a great actress:

I wasn't actually in the industry that long, but I made like a hundred movies and finally what brought an end to that career and that part of my life was AIDS; I got scared, petrified of AIDS, and I saw a lot of it because I lived in San Francisco, and I had to run out and get tested right away because I had gotten it on with John Holmes, and I was afraid because it was rumored that John Holmes had died of AIDS, so I was freaked out. But I'm clean, thank goodness.

She went on to describe her time living with the late Jamie Gillis.

He was my beast, and I was his California blonde, she said. We lived together for two years, and I had so much fun with him, and eventually, we just got hired as a couple, and he didn't fly, so we would go back and forth from coast to coast, because there were really two communities of X-rated stuff, on the train, and we had a lot of train experiences where we didn't invite people into our little room.

In a surprising move, BDSM porn company Kink.com has suddenly stopped production on two of its most extreme sub-sites. CEO Peter Acworth tells Salon the company is halting filming on the wildly popular Public Disgrace and Bound in Public. Both series were shot with a public, and often participatory, audience -- and as such, generated attention and criticism. The company is also rebranding HardCoreGangBangs as FantasyGangBangs, while putting a stronger emphasis throughout the series on consent.

At the same time, Kink is ramping up its educational efforts, in the form of video demonstrations of and sexuality workshops on everything from fellatio to dirty talk to rope restraint. Increasingly, Kink will be welcoming the public into The Armory, the company's historic castle-like building in San Francisco, for events kinky and otherwise.

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Dancers at a Washington strip club are suing to prevent officials from releasing their names and addresses due to a public records request. Because most strippers are required to have an entertainer's license , their identities are on the record.

Two unnamed dancers filed the complaint against Pierce County, on behalf of about 70 dancers and managers at Dreamgirls at Fox's, as well as any former dancers. They are asking county officials not to release copies of their business licenses, and thus real identities, to a man who has filed a public records request for that information.

Gilbert H. Levy, an attorney for the dancers, acknowledged that the information can legally be released under the state's Public Records Act, but that the entertainers have free-speech, privacy and safety interests in keeping the licenses and their true identities confidential.

The request from for copies of all adult entertainment licenses on file for Dreamgirls at Fox's did not list a reason for the filing. Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason.com speculated that it's entirely likely the person who wants this information is a crazy stalker or an anti-sex nutjob. Maybe both. Maybe merely a blackmailer or a 4chan-er. At any rate, it's hard to imagine many non-nefarious reasons for requesting personal information on a wide swath of individuals in a sensitive job.

The adult website Pornhub took out an enormous billboard on Times Square to feature the winner of its contest seeking a great non-pornographic ad.

The winner is Nuri Galver, a copywriter from Istanbul, whose entry was chosen from more than 3,000 others. Galver envisioned more than just the image:

People of different nationalities, with different types of hand, will sing our 'All You Need Is Hand' song with the music of 'All You Need Is Love.' This will be our image film. Depending on budgetary situation, we can use celebrities in our movies. Sure, it increases the effect of the campaign.

But the advert did not last long. The hotel on which the billboard was hosted ordered its removal, although Pornhub reports that it received the hotel's approval before the ad's launch. Pornhub is now seeking an alternative site.

U.S. bank regulators tried to coerce and intimidate banks in an effort to force them to sever ties to the porn industry, a trade group says.

In a court filing this week, a trade group called the Third Party Payment Processors Association accused the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp of engaging in moralistic regulation over the banking industry,.

The Third Party Payment Processors Association, a trade group formed last year to represent payment firms, accused the FDIC of using the bank-examination process to coerce and intimidate banks into cutting off relationships with payment processing firms that do business with porn merchants.

The FDIC has engaged in an improper practice of moralistic regulation of the banking industry, the legal brief says. The group wrote that regulators targeted the industry because they thought pornography was not good for consumers.