On Friday the porn industry will lift a moratorium on shooting that has now been in effect for two weeks following the announcements of HIV infections of three performers. Two of the performers, as previously reported, were in an off-screen relationship and likely did not get infected while on set at Kink.com. The company nonetheless ended up being embroiled in the story, and then a third, unidentified performer who had never worked with either of the other two announced that s/he was HIV positive two weeks ago, prompting the current moratorium.
In a statement, Diane Duke, head of industry trade group the Free Speech Coalition, says that all performers will now be required to be tested every 14 days, instead of once a month. It was during such routine, on-set testing that Kink performer Cameron Bay tested positive last month. Duke says, "It is important that we remain vigilant."
The hetero porn industry has never been particularly fond of condoms, you see, and the testing protocols are to ensure workplace safety for the models while still allowing the sex itself to be condom-free. (A recently passed law that pertains only to Los Angeles County requires condoms on all shoots, but it's only meant that more shoots are happening in the Valley.) Most of the established gay porn world, meanwhile, has stuck to condoms only since the mid-1990s, although market pressures have forced many producers to abandon that and shoot more "bareback" porn. Bareback now accounts for roughly half of the non-free gay porn being consumed on the web.
Update: The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the organization that pushed for the passage of Los Angeles' condom law, held a press conference Wednesday morning at which a teary Cameron Bay suggested that she was exposed to unsafe working conditions at Kink.
