State says sperm is hazardous material

Exactly how far into your personal business will the government go? We already have them rubbing peoples genitals and sliding fingers between their ass cheeks in order to "protect" us from terrorists. This is spite of the fact that the TSA terrorizes fliers by the millions on a daily basis. I remember one of these obese clowns screaming at dozens of people because they were not in a "straight" line. He literally yelled: "You will get in a straight line. You will stand up against the wall. If you do not do so no one will be flying today." That's just a power trip for the ignorant.

Now we have a government agency treating sperm like it is nuclear waste and defining is a hazardous material. More on that in a second.

There are two kinds of power trips. One for stupid people, one for relatively intelligent people. The TSA, like law enforcement, tends to attract the less intelligent. Their power trip is based on the thinking found in the lower echelons of moral development: obedience and punishment. They bark out orders and demands and believe that use of physical force is one of the first means to deal with those who don't snap to attention each time they vomit out orders.

But there is a also a power trip for the more intelligent. These are the classes of people who believe they are so smart that they are endowed with some superior right to control others. While they are often as self-serving as their less intelligent counterparts they justify their intrusions as "help," even when those being helped resent it very much.

The real difference between the upper echelon power trippers and those below them is in their justifications. Those attracted to the TSA and similar agencies (DEA, ICE, police, etc.) believe they are the right to coerce others because they have the power. These are the old schoolyard bullies of your childhood, the ones who believe that because they are ABLE to smash your face in, they have the right to do so. They immediately resort to physical force and authority because their ability to think at higher levels of moral development tend to be stunted, limited by their own lack of intelligence.

Their superiors, the ones who make the rules that the thugs physically enforce, tend to honestly believe that they are endowed with a superior intelligence which allows them to control others "for their own good."

And this brings us back to the issue of a newly discovered hazardous material as defined by the intellectuals at Cal/OSHA. Bizarrely they are the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, but call themselves Cal/OSHA instead Cal/DOSH. Go figure.

These bureaucrats, let us call them the DOSHies, went after a gay porn studio called Treasure Island Media and fined them $21,470 for the violation of "workplace safety regulations" because individuals had sex without condoms. The state agency actually spent five months investigating these charges—and you wonder why California is bankrupt.

According to the DOSHies: "Employees were exposed to semen and other potentially infectious materials due to work activities during filming and set cleaning." Please be clear that semen is being defined as a "potentially infectious material" according to DOSH. Of course it is, just like someones saliva, and sneezes. But it is "hazardous" in an entirely different way from something like radium or acid.

These are materials produced by the human body in very natural ways. They are the natural byproduct of sexual activity.

If one government agency can define semen as a hazardous material exactly where does the slippery slope lead? Government loves slippery slopes. They love to over-react and go to bizarre extremes. One lunatic tries to smuggle explosives on a plane in his underwear and we have millions of people being fondled daily by government thugs as a result. Government exaggerates threats and then over-reacts to the exaggeration. The end result is always a more intrusive, violent, offensive government than before the alleged crisis.

When the bureaucrats get, however, is vastly better for them. First, they have large agencies with more powers. They have more "prestige" and often higher salaries justified by the fact that they now have to control more things. They get lovely retirement plans, often get exempted from the very regulations they have to control (top TSA officials don't have to get fondled for instance) and they get emotional satisfaction. The thugs at the bottom get the satisfaction from barking orders and threatening people, the satisfaction of the bully. The puppet-masters who pull the strings on these thugs get the satisfaction that they are "doing" something about the crisis they invented. It tells them that their "intelligently designed" social system is valuable. They go to sleep believing they are helping people by stripping them of their freedom and dignity.

One DOSHie, Deborah Gold, with the pretentious title of "senior safety engineer" said of the porn actors: "Anybody may be infected, therefore you have to treat everybody's blood and other potential infectious materials [such as semen] as thought it can be infectious."

Do we really want that view of sperm to dominate government thinking?

Let us be clear as to what was happening. Adults were choosing to engage in sexual activity on film. The government is defining sex as a hazard unless people have sex in a manner prescribed by faceless bureaucrats making up rules about how to have sex. In this case some actors who were HIV+ were having sex with one another. That is, all of them were HIV+ positive and thus could not infect one another. Other actors who are HIV- were having sex with other actors who were negative as well. Thus no infection could take place.

But still, this was sex. If voluntary sex can be controlled by the DOSHies, in the name of safety, what can be the result? Is this not just another form of Puritanism. Instead of protecting your moral health they justify it by claiming they are protecting your physical health. But in both cases they demand the right to use government coercion against individuals because of the sexual acts they choose.

Does the fact that a camera is running, while they having sex, really make this less intrusive? Does that camera give a state agency the right to control the sexual activities of consenting adults? If the answer is yes, then what about amateur porn?

Today a large percentage of pornography is being produced by amateurs who film themselves at home and then sell that material online, or often just give it away. A quick click of the mouse can open a website where there are 1253 cams operating with individuals having sex for anyone to watch. These include every possible sexual variation that adults can engage in. And these "performers" can be giving "tips" for their show by viewers.

You have sexual activity, being performed for public consumption, in exchange for financial gain. How does that differ from what was going on with the Treasure Island Media production? That is only one site which uses live performances. Another site like Xtube simply allows people to upload their home porn films. They can either release them for free consumption or viewers can be charged a small fee to watch the film, with the site keeping most the funds and the "performers" getting the rest. How precisely does that differ from what was happening in the studio?

Is porn produced for profit at home different from porn produced in a studio? Is sperm less "hazardous" at home? You might argue that at home they are having sex with their partner but that is not necessarily the case. In fact many of these home productions include numerous individuals who are not in relationships with one another. And guess what, a very high percentage of these performers don't use condoms.

Do the DOSHies assert a right to regulate home produced porn, if it is produced for profit? And what if the porn is produced in one year for no profit, and then a year later the "performers" decide to release it?

I can see one of these sperm cops easily arguing that they have to be able to protect porn actors even if they perform from home. After all, being self-employed doesn't exempt you from reams of "safety" regulations, and neither does working from home.

Consider also safety regulations on other "hazardous" materials. There are pesticides which the government bans because it deems it too dangerous to use. Whether you are using it commercially or privately is not their concern. That they say it is hazardous is all that matters and it is banned for use in both locations. Regulations regarding hazardous materials still exist when it the use is entirely private. They may have slightly different regulations and different agencies may be involved but if something is deemed hazardous they eventually get around to controlling private use as much as public use.

Do we really want to live in a world where sperm is deemed a hazard? It's mind-boggling. Do we want EPA teams having to come in just to change the sheets on the beds of teenage boys across the country? Should the back seats of cars parked on "lover's lane" be proclaimed hazardous waste sites?

As I see it, if consenting adults choose to have sex, whether on film or not, whether for pay or not, the state has no business in the matter. Many porn performers are not just there for the pay, which often is not that generous. I've known individuals, male and female, who worked in the adult film industry and they fairly universally said they did it because they enjoyed it, not because of the pay. Many of them had other jobs that paid their way, it wasn't the porn. One performer was rather wealthy on his own receiving money from his family. Yet he traveled the world making porn films because he liked it.

I'm old enough to have watched how politicians act. I've seen it over decades and seen it in multiple countries. And it is fair consistent.

First, they look for anything they can call a problem in order to "address" it. Then they exaggerate the problem in order to justify their solutions. They always pretend their solution will be far less intrusive than it will be, far less costly than it will be, and far more effective at solving the "problem" than it will be.

Once they are given the power to address the problem the problem will continually remain unsolved. If anything they will find more problems than they ever "anticipated" requiring more action on their part and more powers for themselves. The costs will expand until they are out of control.

They will offer assurances that they will NEVER go beyond a certain point. A small tax will NEVER become a big one. Searching everyone going onto to planes will NEVER lead to touching the genitals of passengers—or as they claim now—will never lead to strip searches. But the intrusive measures they take ALWAYS go much further. The will almost always exceed all the limitations that they voluntarily set for themselves. And, once they apply the principle in one place, they spend the rest of their working day trying to find other areas of life where they can get away with applying it as well.