Porn group lifts moratorium on filming but orders extra HIV/STD tests

An adult film industry trade group announced that shooting can begin again Friday after a two-week moratorium prompted by HIV cases in the industry.

The industry also said it would revise its sexually transmitted disease testing protocols to require performers to test every 14 days rather than every 28, as was previously required. Performers will be required to test again on or after Thursday to be cleared for work.

Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult film industry, called a weeklong filming moratorium last month after a 28-year-old actress who goes by the screen name Cameron Bay tested positive for HIV.

Shortly after that moratorium was lifted, Rod Daily, another adult actor who is Bay’s real-life boyfriend, announced on Twitter that he too had tested positive.

The industry coalition initially said that it had not been officially notified of those test results and did not immediately call another moratorium. Days later, the coalition announced that a third performer -- who has not been publicly identified -- had also tested positive.

The group said all of the performers’ on-screen partners had tested negative and maintained that none of them contracted the infection on set.

Critics of the industry said the incident still shows that producers are not doing enough to protect performers by requiring them to wear condoms.

“Whether or not [Bay] was infected on set, she performed with HIV between her tests,” AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein said last week. “If you think that Russian roulette is a great way to protect workers, then the present system is perfect.”

Free Speech Coalition Chief Executive Diane Duke contended that the testing protocols have worked to prevent transmissions on set.

“It’s disappointing when scare tactics are used,” she said.

AIDS Healthcare Foundation backed a Los Angeles County measure passed by voters last year to require that actors wear condoms during shoots and also backed a state bill that would have done the same.

That bill, written by Isadore Hall (D-Compton), died last week after it was held up in the state Senate’s Rules Committee as being too similar to another bill that had previously been held in the Assembly.

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