Amid an ongoing nationwide moratorium on shooting pornography, an AIDS health care advocacy group said Monday that a fourth performer has come forward as HIV-positive. Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, told HuffPost that a male porn performer approached the group saying he had tested positive for HIV.
“I think he wanted to check out everybody that could be of any help to him. We gave him information but he’s not ready to come forward,” Weinstein said, adding that it’s not clear whether the performer contracted HIV on set or not. Weinstein declined to say when the performer approached AHF and when the performer found out he tested HIV-positive.
However, the Free Speech Coalition, the industry trade group that oversees a database of all performers’ STD tests, accused AHF — which advocates for condom use in porn — of being untruthful. “We have no evidence of a fourth performer testing positive for HIV,” FSC spokeswoman Joanne Cachapero said in an email.
“This information came from AHF who is currently trying to push regulation on the industry and has, on many occasions, reported false information to the media to advance their political agenda. It is extremely likely that this situation is more posturing for AHF’s political agenda.”
The LA County Department of Public Health said it has not received a report of a new HIV case. “Because of medical confidentiality and privacy, Public Health will not comment on the details of individual cases or their contacts,” the department said in an email.
The FSC called a porn filming moratorium Friday — the second in a month — after a performer, who has remained anonymous, tested positive for HIV. Last month, the group called a moratorium, which lasted six days, after porn performer Cameron Bay tested HIV-positive. Porn performer, Rod Daily, who has been in a romantic relationship with Bay, came forward as HIV-positive on Twitter.
Bay said to HuffPost that Daily and she have been in a relationship for two years, and she said that Daily found out he was HIV-positive on Wednesday.
The FSC said that case was not officially reported to the group. Weinstein and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation launched an effort in 2012 to get condoms mandated on porn sets in LA County. Despite a large, coordinated campaign against it by the porn industry, LA voters passed the mandate, called Measure B, in November. Since then, Weinstein has criticized the LA County Department of Public Health for failing to enforce the law since it’s been in place.
Industry insiders say there has been no enforcement. “It’s a slow-motion car wreck. Nobody wants to take responsibility,” Weinstein said to HuffPost. “It doesn’t work trying to pin down who infected who. It’s a waste of time. There’s no separation between what people do on film or in their personal lives,” he said. “If you don’t wear a seatbelt and you don’t wear a condom, eventually you’re likely to get hurt.” “I don’t know how much more evidence there needs to be that this is not working,” Weinstein said.
Most porn companies say that using condoms would hurt their profits so much that they would be forced to film outside of LA, where 90 percent of porn is currently made. Some porn performers say that being forced to wear condoms is a violation of their free speech. A few porn producers filed a lawsuit to block implementation of the measure but a federal judge found in August that the law is constitutional.
Also read: FSC Says “We have no evidence of a fourth performer testing positive for HIV”
