Relax, relax, take the gun out of your mouth, I’m only talking about the new porn, the stuff you have to pay for. The free stuff will be fine. Anyway, the AP reports that the porn industry is (voluntarily) cancelling shoots across your mom’s gunt Southern California after an adult performer reportedly tested positive for HIV. Details are still itchy sketchy, with AVN reporting that the positive test has yet to be confirmed.
From The AP:
Free Speech Coalition executive director Diane Duke told The Los Angeles Times on Monday that her group became aware of the HIV case Saturday.
A series of tests were being conducted on the performer to confirm the case before anyone the performer might have spread the illness to will be notified to get tested, Duke told The Associated Press.
Duke declined to release the performer’s name, age or gender, citing the person’s federal right to medical privacy. She also declined to say how her group learned of the case.
The case was found in an out-of-state clinic that doesn’t report to California health officials, said Duke.
If the initial case is confirmed, the group will ask two generations of the person’s sexual partners to get tested, meaning those who had sex with the performer and the sexual partners [of those who had sex with the sexual partners of the performer].
The porn industry was shut down similarly in late 2010, after porn actor Derrick Burts was diagnosed HIV positive.
Burts has since gone on to advocate for the mandatory use of condoms in porn with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
Earlier this month, the health advocacy group announced that it will gather 41,138 petition signatures to get the issue of condoms in porn on the June 2012 ballot.
The ballot measure would ask Los Angeles residents whether porn producers must require performers to use condoms on shoots as a condition of getting a filming permit.
“The question remains how many performers must become infected with HIV and other serous STDs before the industry will clean up its act and government will do the right thing?” said Michael Weinstein, president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. |Yahoo|
If you’ll recall (and I know you will), the last time this happened, the performer claimed he contracted the virus after performing a scene with someone whom clinic officials had described as a “known positive”, on the set of a gay porn, which, according to the LA Times, don’t require performers to show proof of an up-to-date HIV test on the day they’re performing like straight porn (which, if true, sounds like the most insane loophole in the history of loopholes). So to me, saying the current rules don’t work, when all the recent HIV cases in porn that I’ve heard of, happened when someone went outside the current rules, seems unfair. Far be it from me to advocate endangering adult film stars (our nation’s most precious resource), but asking all performers to wear condoms in every shoot is kind of like asking every action movie to only shoot using toy guns. (Because the guns are like penises, you see — that’s Analogies 101). Sure, condoms might (MIGHT) help eliminate the problem, but… AT WHAT COST?!?!?!