Geez, Mike. I go away for a couple of days and it looks like all breaks loose. And I’m trying to imagine your first day as a SCOTUS. Do you wear fishing gear and a t-shirt under your robes?

I also had a chance to read Julie Meadows’ response to your request for a comment on AdultFYI. Put aside the personal nature of the response – that’s between you and Julie. If you read through the rest of the response, coupled with silence from other organizations, and what you have is a big no comment with regard to Stagliano. Two thoughts.

This may not mean anything to the industry beyond whether one side in the case prevails over the other. If you’re in the pornography business, that may be a great outcome. What it says is the government really doesn’t care what you do to performers; your business is too dirty to regulate and we don’t want to get dirty. Just don’t kill anyone.

It’s bad news for performers because it says the government doesn’t care enough about what happens to you to protect you in the same way it would protect someone in a more socially-acceptable business. As long as a producer doesn’t maim or kill you, you’re a deer in the headlights for whatever the industry can imagine and ask you to do. You’re also at risk of catching any passing on whatever diseases and infections are among the pool of performers you’ll work with because the industry response to STDs other than HIV, at least as expressed on other boards is: Don’t cry over STDs. Just take some penicillin and get over it. Cost of doing business – your cost, not ours.

In that regard, here’s what I find interesting. Young girls are expected to do almost anything today. But when you see comments from many of the older performers on either AdultFYI, or who post on your site, or are quoted in books on the industry, they’ll say things like: “Back in our day, we faked ATM” (Rebecca Bardoux); “I didn’t do anal and all that crazy stuff” (Sharon Mitchell); “I wasn’t an anal queen” (Seka); “I was engaged four times because a guy wanted to have anal sex with me and I wouldn’t do it otherwise” (Amber Lynn). Doesn’t it say something about the change in the industry when industry icons also say, in essence, “This stuff is crazy. I would never do that!”

Which leads to the reason this could be important. Some businesses are regulated for reasons of the public health and public good – think the gambling industry or prostitution in Nevada. Or, think the coal mining industry.

But the larger reason businesses are regulated is that they become unable to regulate themselves. Someone has to step in and referee. Someone has to say: this is acceptable business behavior for your industry and this is not.

That’s where porn is right now. You had a time – and I would argue it was the most industry’s most profitable time – where pornographers had lines they did not cross in terms of content. I don’t know if the Cambria Rules came first, or if Cambria wrote down unwritten rules that had worked, but there seemed to be a limit to what people would and would not film.

In addition, for whatever reason, the industry appeared to be relatively HIV free.

What you’ve got now is an industry that is unable or unwilling to regulate the content it produces. That may or may not be a First Amendment issue. We won’t know unless and until someone tests it.

But, you also have an industry that is unwilling or unable to say what is acceptable behavior when it comes to the health of its performers.

The argument had been: We test. We test regularly. Testing works.

When testing didn’t work, for whatever reason, the argument was, well, the individual didn’t get HIV on a porn set or on a heterosexual porn set. It’s escorting. It’s cross-overs that are to blame.

When you point out that STDs besides HIV are prevalent in the porn population, the response is either that the researchers lied and you can’t trust their stats, or: Hey, what the big deal. You cure it with some antibiotics. That’s the risk you take when you choose this profession.

When Mr. Marcus shoots while taking antibiotics – according to his story – and may or may not have faked his test – the response is to attack him but remain silent on the larger issue. Or to say, so what, no one got sick as far as we know.

Now, you have Stagliano. He may or may not have tested. He may or may not have revealed his status to a performing partner. It doesn’t seem to matter that you now have a heterosexual HIV + person interacting on film with the intimate parts of naked actresses because folks think he’s a nice guy, and besides, he didn’t have sex.

When pictures surface of him with his fingers inside performers, well, it doesn’t matter because it wasn’t his penis.

When pictures surface of him with his penis between the buttocks of a Brazilian performer – I can’t tell whether he’s penetrated her or is just up against her – the response is silence.

My point is: The industry rule seems to be: We have strict testing policies and you can’t work with an STD unless:

The STD is non HIV. If that’s the case, hey, you should have expected to get a disease when you signed on.

The STD is HIV and you have non-penetrative sex – and we’re going to define and redefine what counts as penetrative sex, based on whether or not you’re an industry icon.

When an industry can’t define what is and isn’t safe and acceptable behavior, the government steps in.

That’s where you’re at at this moment in time. Unless, the first scenario is accurate, and the government just doesn’t give a damn about the safety of performers because its a distasteful industry.