Porn industry faces third shutdown this year after another actor's positive HIV test

GUARDIAN NEWS SERVICE

The pornographic film industry in Los Angeles is facing its third production shutdown in a year, after another performer tested positive for HIV. The news rounds off a difficult year for the industry in LA, in which a law mandating the use of condoms on film sets has prompted many companies to move productions elsewhere.

On Saturday the Free Speech Coalition, the trade association for porn performers, issued a statement announcing the positive test by an unnamed performer and calling for a "production moratorium … until further notice".

The industry shut down for two weeks in September, after three performers tested positive for HIV. It shut down for one week in August after a female performer, Cameron Bay, announced that she had tested positive. One of the three performers who tested positive in September was named as Rod Daily, who had been romantically linked to Bay.

On Saturday, an FSC spokeswoman told the Los Angeles Times there was nothing to suggest the new positive test was linked to any of those from August and September.

In November 2012, Los Angeles county voters passed Measure B, which mandated the use of condoms in pornographic films. The measure, which in August a district judge ruled partly unconstitutional, is subject to ongoing lawsuits and has not been rigorously enforced.

However, this week the FSC released a statement blaming Measure B for "over $450,000 in lost permitting revenue as shoots, jobs move out of state". The FSC said 24 permits for adult film production had been issued in Los Angeles county in 2013, compared with 480 by the same point in 2012. The FSC also released a statement rebutting rumors of "an antibiotic-resistant strain of gonorrhea in the adult performer population".

In September, the FSC chief executive, Diane Duke, said: "We're not against condoms. We're against condoms being mandatory. Our performers prefer not to use condoms."

On Saturday, Michael Weinstein, president of the Aids Healthcare Foundation, an advocacy group that seeks mandatory condom use on porn sets, told the LA Times: "The lion's share of the responsibility of what's going on now lies with government agencies, who aren't enforcing the law."

Announcing the latest positive test, Duke said: "There was a positive test at one of our testing centers. We are taking every precaution while we do research to determine if there's been any threat to the performer pool. 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."

The FSC subsequently released a statement criticizing social-media speculation about the identity of the performer, adding: "All first-generation contacts (people with whom the performer had contact, on-set or off, that could have transmitted the virus, within the window of the last negative test) have been contacted and tested.

"We should have all results of those tests by early next week. We'll alert you as we know. The positive performer is working with the testing doctors to determine a timeline and genealogy of the virus, and to determine if the performer pool was exposed."

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