SAN DIEGO — The San Diego Union-Tribune is the latest major California paper to say “no” to Proposition 60, calling the AIDS Healthcare Foundation-sponsored initiative “excessive.”
The Union-Tribune, in an editorial with the headline “Prop 60: Don’t Overregulate Adult Film Industry,” noted that many liken the proposal to “digital mob” justice and say the idea that this would limit worker exploitation is dubious given that performers increasingly are their own producers.
“Perhaps Prop 60 would be defensible if California had a pornography-linked public health crisis,” the Union-Tribune said. “But [AHF President Michael] Weinstein simply hasn’t made the case that the failure to strongly enforce the 1992 law has led to significant health problems.”
If Prop 60 passed, Weinstein could sue the producer of sexually explicit films that didn’t follow condom rules if the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health failed to act on a complaint within 21 days.
“The measure also includes a provision unlike any other on a ballot measure that we can remember,” the Union-Tribune said. “If Prop 60 passes, but the state refuses to defend its legality in a court challenge, Weinstein would automatically be hired and reimbursed by state taxpayers to provide such a defense.”
The San Diego Union-Tribune now joins a long list of California papers that have urged a “no” vote on Prop 60. Other papers that say no to the initiative include the San Francisco Chronicle, the Fresno Bee, the Sacramento Bee, the Mercury News, the East Bay Times and the Orange County Register.
Prop 60 is opposed by both the California Democratic Party and the California Republican Party.
It also has been opposed by major HIV/AIDS and civil rights organizations including the Free Speech Coalition, Equality California, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, San Francisco Medical Society, AIDS Project LA, the Los Angeles LGBT Center, the Transgender Law Center and APAC, the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee.
