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Protest Today: Shelley Lubben’s Group, AIDS Healthcare Going After Marriott Chain for Airing Porn

Los Angeles–As part of its ongoing campaign to require the use of
condoms in porn films in an effort to reduce the spread of STDs including HIV, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) will host a press conference, `porn in` and protest tomorrow evening, Wednesday, October 21st starting at 9:15 PMPacific at the Downtown Los Angeles Marriott Hotel (333 Figueroa Street) to highlight the Mormon-founded international hotel chain`s profiteering from its promotion and sale of unsafe, condom-less pornography sold to hotel guests purchased for viewing through the chain`s hotel room televisions.

Marriott`s corporate website devotes considerable space to the role of the Mormon faith of its founder, John Willard Marriott, and its guiding hand in his life and work building the international hotel chain.

“Marriott is certainly not alone among major hotel chains that promote and
profit off the sale of unsafe, condom-less adult films to their hotel guests,” said Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

“However, we want to highlight the brazen hypocrisy-the Mormon Marriott`s moral masquerade-of such a so-called family-oriented hotel chain profiteering off adult films that endanger the lives of the performers acting in them. Sexual acts filmed without participating performers using condoms depict the unprotected exchange of bodily fluids, an action that violates occupational safety laws and places the performers at risk for a number of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.

We urge Marriott`s corporate leaders to only make those adult films which
portray safer sex practices-chief among them the use of condoms-available for purchase and viewing by their guests, and until we get such a commitment from Marriott officials, we are urging a public boycott of the entire Marriott Hotel chain.”

AHF is hosting its press event-which will feature a `Porn In`-the streaming of unsafe porn available on television in one of the Marriott`s guest rooms at the downtown Los Angeles hotel-in conjunction with the Pink Cross Foundation and its founder, Shelley Lubben, a former porn actress from the adult entertainment industry.

The `Porn In` will take place starting at 9:15 pm. (For the room
number of the `Porn In,` please call AHF`s Ged Kenslea (323) 791-5526 or Lori Yeghiayan (323) 377-4312.) Among the new release adult film titles that Marriott is offering its hotel guests are, “Just Explicit Sex,” “Naughty Office Workers,” “Mothers Do It Better,” and “Daddy`s Girl Takes it All.”

“I fully support the campaign to require condoms in all porn production, and believe putting public pressure on middlemen such as the Marriott-latter day purveyors of porn who are profiting richly off the depiction of unsafe sexual activity-can only help the health and safety of performers who are forced to work in unsafe and hazardous work conditions every day,” said Shelley Lubben, former porn actress and founder of the Pink Cross Foundation, an IRS approved 501(c)(3) public charity dedicated to offering adult industry workers emotional, financial and transitional support for those who want out of the adult industry.

“The industry did not and still does NOT enforce condom usage, so STDs and HIV were and still remain a high risk among porn actors and actresses. I know because I risked my life and caught herpes and developed early cervical cancer.

While my own life has taken an entirely new and profoundly fulfilling direction and I now work to help performers leave the industry altogether, I know that condoms are one way to help save lives and prevent disease among those still working in the industry.”

As part of its Marriott protest and boycott demanding safer sex adult films in Marriott`s hotel rooms, AHF will launch a viral and print advertising campaign urging the public to avoid booking rooms at Marriott Hotels until the chain`s executives make a commitment to do so. The viral online component of the ad campaign will launch later this week; the print ad campaign follow next week and will focus initially on newspapers in the Salt Lake City area, home to the Marriott founder`s Mormon religion.

As part of its ongoing campaign to require the use of condoms in adult films shot in California, AHF has been mounting a high profile advocacy campaign directly targeting the industry, including key players like Hustler`s founder Larry Flynt; it has also publicly pressed Los Angeles County political and health officials to comply with the law as far as legal reporting of HIV and STD cases-including those found among performers in the industry-and to require the use of condoms on adult film sets in LA County; and it has also recently sued the County to achieve this aim.

Most recently, AHF and Pink Cross also filed 16 workplace safety complaints with Cal OSHA (the California Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Occupational Safety and Health) based on
unsafe sexual acts depicting the exchange of bodily fluids filmed in unprotected sex acts in more than 56 films submitted to Cal OSHA with the complaints.

AHF filed its lawsuit against Los Angeles County Department of Public Health after exhausting all other methods to compel the County to fulfill its obligation to protect the public`s health in the wake of the revelation in mid-June that an actress working in the adult film business had tested positive for HIV. At that time, AHF had urged the County to better monitor HIV and STD prevention in the region`s adult film industry-and require condom use-or to shut down porn sets.

Since the June 17th reporting of the latest HIV outbreak-and the subsequent
reporting by the LA Times that as many as 22 porn performers may have tested positive in the last five years-no action has been taken by the County to halt the spread of STDs on LA porn sets or to conduct the proper and legally required public health follow-up with those thought to be infected.

AHF, the US` largest non-profit HIV/AIDS healthcare provider, which operates the largest community-based alternative HIV testing program in California conducting more than 14,000 free HIV tests annually, has also been trying to sponsor legislation in Sacramento that would mandate the use of condoms by actors performing in films produced by the California industry. AHF believes a so-called `condoms in porn` bill should be drafted as a worker safety provision of California`s Labor Code akin to how the Labor Code currently requires the use of hard hats and other garments and barriers as safely precautions on certain California work sites and locations. To date, the legislators approached have been unwilling or unable to author such prudent public health legislation.

Los Angeles County`s Department of Public Health is aware of an ongoing and
pervasive sexually transmitted disease crisis in LA`s pornography industry, a fact that is well documented. DPH has cited numerous figures confirming an STD epidemic among performers in adult films, including the fact that performers in hardcore pornography are ten times more likely to be infected with a sexually transmitted disease than members of the population at large.

According to figures cited by DPH, there were 2,013 documented cases of
Chlamydia among LA porn performers between 2003 and 2007. In the same period, 965 cases of gonorrhea were documented. Many performers suffer multiple infections. In the period April 2004 to March 2008 there have been 2,847 STD infections diagnosed among 1,884 performers in the hardcore industry in LA County. DPH attributes the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases in the porn industry to a lack of protective equipment for partners, including condoms.

The agency recommends condoms be used during production, but has never taken steps to ensure their use, or to protect the performers who are essentially required to endanger their health in order to remain employed.

“This is not just about one industry, but about our entire community, as the spread of disease among adult film performers endangers themselves as well as their sexual partners in and outside the industry,” added AHF`s Weinstein. “Los Angeles County Public Health officials cannot keep passing the buck on this by playing ping pong on this with the state and the industry itself. That is why we are filing these complaints with Cal/OSHA today.”

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) is the US` largest non-profit HIV/AIDS
healthcare provider. AHF currently provides medical care and/or services to more than 115,000 individuals in 21 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean and the Asia Pacific Region.

The Pink Cross Foundation is an IRS approved 501(c)(3) public charity dedicated to offering adult industry workers emotional, financial and transitional support for those who want out of the adult industry. www.shelleylubben.com

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