FLYNT MEETS FRIEDMAN….Larry Flynt on HIV testing in the porn industry:
Employers like me require that every performer in the business be tested every 30 days, not just for HIV but for gonorrhea and chlamydia as well. It’s because of such aggressive testing that this HIV outbreak in the adult industry has been caught early and can be controlled. In other words, the industry’s approach to HIV safety is working. I believe that additional regulation would not only be unnecessary, it would be counterproductive.
….Those of us who are in the business want to protect our investment; we are not going to do anything that is stupid or shortsighted. We are most certainly not going to do anything that we believe will harm another human being. The safeguards are already in place. They have worked for the last five years. Leave them alone, and they will continue to work.
I should note that I have no opinion on the substantive issue here. But it was still sort of jarring to open up a major metro daily and see an op-ed by the publisher of Hustler that makes him sound like just another industry flack arguing that government regulation is unnecessary and will simply hurt an important $14 billion industry run by responsible businessmen who would never do anything that might harm the public good.
Just jarring, that’s all.
