Fact: A part-time porn actress taking her industry-mandated HIV test came up positive last week.
Fact: She and the four actors who recently worked with her have been quarantined by the industry.
Fact: She is the 1st female performer to test HIV positive since 2004. Five others were detected in an outbreak five years ago. (Sixteen men, mostly actors who have sex with other men, have tested positive during that time.)
Fact: During that same time, non-porn actresses in America acquired HIV at the rate of 35 women per day.
So-called morality groups will of course use this single new HIV infection to call for the end of porn in America. But there’s a more insidious movement afoot—from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which has called a rally for June 15 in West Hollywood. They are demanding legislation that would require the use of condoms by actors performing in porn videos made in California.
They tried this five years ago and failed. “We are going to find a legislator to author and carry a bill,” said AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein. He likened such a requirement to worker safety provisions of California’s Labor Code, “which requires the use of hard hats and other garments and barriers as safety precautions on certain California work sites and locations.”
What nonsense. If only construction workers were as safe at work as porn actresses. No actresses have died as a result of workplace activity—a safety record that industries like construction, firefighting, and even the postal service cannot match.
By a strange coincidence, Cal/OSHA says it is mounting a probe in connection with the recent HIV exposure case. It, too, last tried this in 2004.
The unholy alliance between HIV activists and the state aims to shut down the porn industry, whose “immorality” is hated by both. Cal/OSHA knows that actresses are contractors, not employees, so most of its faux “caring” is completely irrelevant. And AIDS activists know that if legislation goes through, it will create a massive bureaucracy with inspections and other regulations that will bring the industry to a crawl (and not in a good way).
“Porn actress gets HIV” makes great headlines, and the bravado of “we’re gonna get legislation requiring condoms” will attract donations, but both are a desperate attempt to attack a legal industry that has a lower rate of disease than the rest of the country.
Which city has the highest rate of HIV infection in the U.S.? A city obsessed with screwing everyone, but which has no porn production—Washington, DC.