Should HIV Be A Part Of Gay Porn? One Director Thinks So.

It's the elephant in the room in all of porn, but with gay porn still bearing the same social stigmas that all gay ephemera does, HIV seems to be the word no one wants to say. Well, one director is challenging those notions.

Provocateur Paul Morris, director of the new film Viral Loads for Treasure Island Media, just gave an interview to Vice (link below) and his stance on HIV in porn is shocking in the way it pulls virtually no punches.

I find the most offensive reaction to what I've done is people saying that I clearly don't understand the suffering and what was lost due to HIV. The vast majority of my acquaintances and friends and lovers died. It isn't that I'm untouched. It's that I'm so deeply touched by it that I believe in the necessity of remembering what it is that they and I all explored—and not forgetting it. That's crucial to me. The most painful thing for me to hear is I'm callous, or I'm doing this to make a buck on the deaths of other people or something like that. That's horrifying to me.

Viral Loads apparently features a scene in which an HIV-negative leading man, played by Blue Bailey, has a jar with over 200 loads in it poured directly into his ass. Morris takes offense at the interviewer's thought that this might be considered offensive or insensitive.

The number of men who have written to me asking to be the recipient of gallons of semen is virtually uncountable. These aren't the incidental fantasies of a small fringe of outliers. These speak to the heart of the sexual imagination of most queer men. It wasn't made for you. There's no reason for you to see it. For you, it would read as an irrational stunt. But for the straight world, much of what comprises queer culture and life is incomprehensible. Regrettably, the same can still be said for many of the older members of the gay world. Years ago I stated that all gay men are HIV-positive. That is, every gay man alive today is defined as much by the viral load narrative as by any external homophobia. If you wonder at the meaning of a jar filled with poz loads being poured up the ass of a happy, intelligent, and more-than-willing young gay man, the primary meaning is that there is no reason or excuse for continuing to live in fear of a virus.

Morris believes that the only way to break down these taboos and stereotypes is to confront them head-on, and his views on future are insanely optimistic.

Is HIV inextricably linked with the gay identity?

No, and in 20 years it'll be all but forgotten. It is right now, and what I'm saying is, we're more than this. The point of Viral Loads, was for those people to whom it would make sense to look at it, say it, own it, and fucking move on. Fucking move on! In 20 years, there will be references to HIV, and young gay man will astonish and horrify people who are now in their 20s when they say, "What the fuck are you talking about?" And the men will say, "I remember the day when it was a big deal. I remember the day when if we had just fucked somebody and come up their ass, we were worried about HIV." My point is: Time to fucking move on. Somebody said, "How safe does it have to be for you before you'll just fuck somebody?" My answer is: It's there! We're there. We've been there. Now the important thing is to break the mould of stigma and terror and knee-jerk reaction.