Porn performer tests positive for HIV; industry group seeks shutdown
The porn film industry faces another shutdown after it was announced Friday that a performer had tested positive for HIV.
The name and gender of the performer were not released. Officials with the Free Speech Coalition, an adult-film industry trade group that called Friday for a moratorium on filming, said the HIV-positive result came from a testing center in Los Angeles.
The moratorium would be the third such shutdown this year.
“Are we still going to be having this argument when there’s the 10th shutdown or 20th? Or the 50th infection?” said Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, an advocacy group pushing for a statewide requirement that condoms be used on porn film sets.
The Free Speech Coalition said it was working to identify partners of the performer who tested positive.
“We take the health of our performers very seriously and felt that it was better to err on the side of caution while we determine whether anyone else may have been exposed,” said Diane Duke, the coalition’s chief executive.
There was nothing to suggest the case is linked to any HIV-positive results from earlier this year, said Joanne Cachapero, a spokeswoman for the industry group.
The coalition called for a shutdown in August after actress Cameron Bay tested positive for HIV. A performer romantically linked to Bay, Rod Daily, later said on Twitter that he also was HIV-positive, but his announcement did not trigger a separate moratorium because it was not reported officially.
The second shutdown occurred in September, when an industry-affiliated doctor contacted the coalition with results of a third HIV-positive performer.
Weinstein said he hoped the call for the latest moratorium would nudge county officials, who he said were not diligently enforcing Measure B, the voter-backed law requiring condom use in adult films in Los Angeles County.
“The lion’s share of the responsibility of what’s going on now lies with government agencies, who aren’t enforcing the law,” he said.
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