Adult production studio Kink.com has released the following statement regarding lawsuits filed by former performers Cameron Bay and her partner Rod Daily regarding their long-standing, as-yet-unfounded claims that they contracted HIV while performing for Kink.com:
Yesterday, Kink.com received two lawsuits from performers who are suing for damages. Cameron Bay (aka Cameron Adams) and Rod Daily (aka Joshua Rodgers) claim to have contracted HIV while shooting for Kink, despite the fact that neither performed with anyone who was HIV+, and the suggested transmission methods are unsupported by any existing science related to the transmission of HIV.
The lawsuits, which appear to be funded by Michael Weinstein’s controversial AIDS Healthcare Foundation, are so illegitimate as to be offensive, avoiding science altogether in favor of emotional arguments about HIV, sex work and BDSM. At times, it reads less like a lawsuit and more like a statement from [Republican strategist] Pat Buchanan or the Westboro Baptist Church, in which AIDS is retribution for immoral behavior.
In the scene cited by the lawsuit, Rodgers used a condom with an HIV negative transgender performer. He cites an eye splash of semen during the shoot as the source of his infection, neglecting both that the performer he worked with was HIV negative, and that in all of scientific literature, there is exactly one case of HIV being transmitted through an eye splash, and that was in a lab setting.
Likewise, all of the performers in Cameron Adam’s scene were HIV negative. For Bay, it's digital penetration that resulted in the virus, or perhaps spanking (she refers to both as sexual acts), assumedly from an extra on the set. (There has never been a recorded HIV transmission anywhere from digital penetration or spanking.) The lawsuit also suggests that she might have contracted the virus from her partner, Xander Corvus, who nicked his penis during the shoot. He was and remains HIV negative.
Somehow, both Daily and Bay each contracted the virus in a statistically impossible way, on separate shoots on separate days. In the absurd logic of the lawsuits, this is somehow a more probable explanation than the undisputed fact that Bay and Daily were dating at the time both became positive, and living with a third person who also later tested HIV positive.
These lawsuits are retaliatory, not just against Kink.com, which has fought hard against AHF’s anti-porn legislation, but also against individual performers and directors at Kink, three of whom who were named in the suit. Lorelei Lee, Tomcat and Sebastian Keyes were all public in their opposition to AHF’s failed AB 1576 legislation, and now must suffer Weinstein’s wrath. The intended effect is to intimidate or silence future opposition to anything AHF proposes at the legislature or at the ballot box.
This claim is a logical outcome of Michael Weinstein’s endless and defamatory campaign against the adult industry. It’s a masterwork of fear-mongering of both sex work, HIV, BDSM, and trans and gay sex, using inflammatory language to cover for a complete lack of factual evidence. It also goes against everything that Weinstein has claimed until now: that condoms are foolproof, that he isn’t interested in condoms for oral sex, and that safety goggles for performers are the fevered imagination of the producers. His tactics are not only disgraceful and dishonest, they harm the real education and prevention efforts taken by performers and HIV advocates.
HIV is a virus. It is not a political weapon. It is not a rhetorical device. It is not a punishment. Unfortunately, for the past several years, Michael Weinstein and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation have used the cases of Bay, Daily and several others as cautionary tales for those who choose to work in the adult industry. It’s shameful, and we call once again for the board members of AHF to #RemoveWeinstein.
