Representatives of the gay and straight adult industry, AIM Healthcare Foundation, the Free Speech Coalition and members of Los Angeles' gay community met this afternoon with officials from the L.A. County Health Department and other health care providers, as well as a representative from Assemblyman Paul Koretz's office, to discuss the healthcare problems facing adult filmmakers.
The meeting, which had been scheduled several weeks ago, proved to be especially timely in light of the two recent HIV-positive cases among adult performers, and one topic of discussion was what the county could do to help prevent future infections among the talent pool.
The discussion, which lasted two hours, was wide-ranging, touching on the differences between the healthcare approaches of the gay and straight sides of adult video production – gay producers simply assume their actors are HIV positive and shoot with condoms, while straight producers rely on periodic testing to detect infections – and the limitations of both approaches were considered. Gay producers, for instance, noted the increase in "bareback" videos on the market, and several participants expressed concern that no testing procedures could absolutely ensure that performers were disease free.
AIM's Sharon Mitchell, PhD, has been pushing for gay performers to be HIV tested, but director Chi Chi LaRue noted that many on the gay side feel that testing, and the records derived from it, are an invasion of privacy. However, the idea of testing gay performers for STDs such as gonorrhea, hepatitis and syphillis was among the possibilities discussed.
Dr. Peter Kerndt of the L.A. County Health Department focused on the concept of harm reduction – an attempt to find a balance between the county's desire to keep the adult performing population HIV free and the need to avoid measures so stringent that productions companies would be forced out of the Los Angeles area, or worse, that they would go underground and shoot both condomless and untested.
While no answers came out of the meeting, many important issues were put on the table and discussed, and all agreed that the open dialog between the officials and the industry was welcome and fruitful – and long overdue.
