www.pornlegends.com posts: In reviewing the past year of the playpen of the damned, better known as the adult entertainment industry, it was not difficult to determine that the HIV outbreak in the spring was the biggest story of 2004. In fact, the ramifications are still being felt and will continue to be, far into 2005.
For years, lawmakers have tried to outlaw adult productions by in acting new obscenity laws and community ordinances and standards. However, the adult industry has always had a friend in the Constitution, namely the First Amendment. Then when this outbreak occurred, it gave the anti-porn establishment their first chance in several years to really clamp down on the industry by playing the “health risk” card in order to do so.
As a result of this giant shit storm, Porn Legends’ has named Darren James and Laura Roxx our 2004 Adult Industry Persons of the Year.
Darren James and Laura Roxx were the first two actors who tested positive for HIV. Jessica Dee and Miss Arroyo eventually tested positive for HIV as well.
The three women who tested positive for HIV had performed “risky” sex acts while working with Darren James. According to former porn star, Miss Sharon Mitchell, PhD., the current executive director of AIM Health Care Foundation, viral load tests fingered James as “patient zero,” the person who brought the virus into the adult community. This was reported in Adult Video News. However, viral loads do not always indicate which person was infected first.
It was reported at the time that James contracted HIV while in Brazil. Then rumors began to surface that James may have contracted HIV weeks earlier while performing in Canada [another reason to hate that country]. One of his co-stars while working in the Great White North was Laura Roxx.
After she was diagnosed with HIV, the mainstream media quickly made Laura Roxx the poster child for everything that is wrong with the adult industry. Roxx was portrayed as a poor 21 year old who got into porn just to get money for college and the nasty adult industry took advantage of her and she ended up penniless and with HIV.
However, rumors began to spread that maybe Ms. Roxx was not the innocent young girl she and the mainstream press would have liked her to be. First, her age was taken into question. Was she 21 or 18? Or in fact, maybe she was closer to 30 years of age. Was she really a 21 year old college student or a well seasoned sex worker? Did she really come to LA to work in the industry, or did she just want to be a prostitute? And her HIV tests…who, what, when, and how, became fodder for much speculation.
At this point the rumors don’t matter much. The dye has been cast and now the adult industry faces its biggest challenge to its survival in many years. But like the cockroach, the industry will adapt and survive the resulting nuclear shit storm that resulted in this outbreak. Only this time it will do so while wearing condoms, rubber gloves, and white lab coats.