An advocacy group backing a proposed state law requiring adult film actors to use condoms launched a robocall campaign Thursday targeting a Los Angeles-area state assemblyman who they accuse of stymieing the legislation.
Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Los Angeles) denied that he is holding the bill up.
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation said it is blanketing Gatto’s district with 100,000 robocalls, pre-recorded messages featuring former adult film actor Derrick Burts and Playboy bunny Rebekka Armstrong, who are HIV-positive.
The group said the calls urge constituents in Gatto’s district, which includes Atwater Village, Burbank, Glendale, Hollywood, La Cañada Flintridge, La Crescenta, Los Feliz, Montrose and Silver Lake, to call his office and tell him to “free AB 640 from his hold and let it come to a vote immediately before anyone else is harmed.”
Foundation officials said the matter has taken on added urgency after an adult film actress tested positive for HIV last month, prompting a week-long nationwide moratorium on filming. Free Speech Coalition, the adult film industry trade association, lifted the moratorium last week, saying that all of actress Cameron Bay’s on-screen partners had tested negative.
On Tuesday, a second adult film actor, who is romantically linked to Bay, told the Los Angeles Daily News that he, too, had tested positive for HIV. The actor, who goes by the screen name Rod Daily, told the publication that he had gotten tested at a private facility in Arizona.
The industry coalition said it has not been directly notified of those test results and so far has not issued another moratorium on filming. The coalition said the actor had performed exclusively in gay and transsexual films, where condom use is standard, but the group advised his partners to get tested.
