Derrick Burts, 24, started working as a porn-film actor in June. By
October, he'd contracted the HIV virus. The AP story on Burts contained
this jaw-dropping sentence: "He said he began to have doubts about the
business after contracting chlamydia, gonorrhea, and herpes in his first
month of work, but was convinced to keep working."
Burts
claimed "I wasn't stupid or oblivious, I knew what was out there. But
it's not something you think about when they fill your head" with
lucrative offers and promises that the work is safe. Lured into the porn
world with the promise that he looked like money, Burts concluded his
greed was unwise: "Making $10,000 or $15,000 for porn isn't worth your
life."
Michael
Weinstein, head of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, took up the Burts
case. While he insisted his group isn't anti-porn, "we are astounded
that the multi-billion-dollar film industry and its fig leaf of a clinic
could not even get it together six weeks after his first HIV-positive
test to link [Burts] to appropriate follow-up medical care."
Lawyers for the porn industry's clinic, the Adult Industry Medical
Health Foundation, which performed the HIV test on Burts, insisted any
claim he was not properly treated is "not truthful and self-serving."
But the California Department of Public Health just denied its
application to operate. Once again, the porn industry looks shady.
Burts says the clinic told him he contracted the HIV virus at a gay
porn shoot in Florida, but the clinic told the press that he must have
become infected in his personal life. Translation: Who are you going to
trust, a porn star? Or the porn industry? This evolving story comes six
years after up to 14 porn actors tested HIV-positive, forcing several
porn companies to close.
Porn moguls obviously want the
"talent" to feel safe, but they don't want to film scenes with condoms -
for monetary reasons. The pornographers at Vivid Entertainment said
when they became a mandatory-condom company for nearly seven years, they
saw their sales drop nearly 20 percent.
Pornography isn't just
unhealthy for our culture; it's unhealthy for the "talent" that stars in
these films, with the endless carousel of sex partners. It should be
only a matter of time before the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (or their California equivalent) starts investigating -
unless, of course, government officials are too afraid of appearing like
squelchers of a Howard Stern version of "freedom of speech."
It's ironic that our news media are such evangelists for "safe sex" with
condoms, and very critical of anyone who's anti-condom as a menace to
society, but they haven't forced that Latex gospel on the porn industry,
despite the obvious threat of fatal sexually-transmitted diseases
between strangers on the set.
Then there's the gay-porn industry
- which as a rule requires condoms in films, but doesn't even HIV-test
their stars. Without much irony, Jay Barmann of the San Francisco blog
SFist reported "The HIV status of gay porn performers is a particular
taboo subject, with a kind of don't-ask-don't-tell attitude
proliferating in the industry, which mostly tries to keep performers
safe by requiring condom use and which fears bad publicity from
performers revealing their statuses."
In response to this
environment, the porn company Treasure Island Media recently took the
shocking step of promoting a gay couple with one HIV-negative and one
HIV-positive partner having "unprotected" sex as "role models." Paul
Morris, the company's owner, spoke of demolishing "the HIV-positive
closet" and pledged "We will not allow reactionary individuals and
organizations to dictate our behavior." HIV and AIDS are "more or less
manageable," he said. "The real battle is against prejudice, ignorance
and unfounded and useless fear."
Barmann, no anti-porn "prude,"
was shocked for the public health and for the rights of actors. "Say
what he will about battling prejudice and fear, Morris stands to benefit
financially from the unprotected sex his performers agree to have, and
he is nonetheless an employer who knowingly puts his workers in harm's
way."
Our media just found it wildly controversial that the Pope
might hypothetically suggest a male prostitute using a condom may be
trying to show a health concern for others. But somehow, there is no
controversy or debate when secular sexual progressives fail to crusade
against pornographers on something so contrary to their own
condom-promoting "safe sex" philosophy. The old AIDS slogan was "Silence
equals death." Who will speak out before the next greedy Derrick Burts
gets infected?
Just how stupid are the Derricks of this world to get involved in death-trap industries like this?
