Industry-Wide Moratorium Called Off After HIV Case Turns Out To Be False Positive [Updated]

Update: The HIV case that apparently occurred at a porn-industry testing center late last week turned out to be a false positive, and the Free Speech Coalition has in turn called off the moratorium on porn shoots that is its standard procedural response.

The Associated Press reported on the false positive, which seems to have gotten less traction than the story about the moratorium itself likely because the second piece of news came out over the holiday weekend.

The porn performer, reportedly female, tested positive for HIV last week in L.A., recalling the events of last summer in the case of the two Kink.com performers, Rod Daily and Cameron Bay, who, it should still be stressed, appear to have been infected off-set.

Industry blogger Mike South and the AHF’s Michael Weinstein immediately took to the internet to connect Kink.com to the incident, even though the company had nothing to do with it and had no idea who the performer in question was.

Subsequent tests revealed that both the performer and all her recent scene partners were all HIV-negative.

The Free Speech Coalition’s Diane Duke gave a brief statement Friday saying, “There was a positive test at one of our testing centers. Confirmatory tests are not yet back but we are taking every precaution to protect performers and to determine if there’s been any threat to the performer pool.”

The Adult Performer Advocacy Committee (APAC) also issued a statement calling for solidarity and asking that there not be the usual finger-pointing between the straight and gay sides of the industry.

The blending of gay and straight performers; transgender and cisgender performers; queer, homo- and heterosexual sexualities; is an increasing reality in our industry. There is no “gay” or straight” industry, even if there are straight and gay audiences.

HIV is not transmitted by gay people to straight people, it is transmitted from a positive partner to a negative partner by very specific sexual acts that are not specific to sexual orientation.

And, in case you don’t get it, here are all the basics of why a moratorium gets called and what steps are taken during the moratorium to identify other performers who are at “first generation” risk of having also contracted HIV, and determining the timeline of the infected performer’s infection.

The moratorium went into effect Thursday, August 28, and will remain in effect until the FSC gives the all-clear.

In the meantime, some performers like Wolf Hudson have already expressed relief that this happened after the recent death of AB1576.