Ugh. The anti-bareback crusade.
It's sometimes hard to speak out against a charity that actually does some good things, but unfortunately the AIDS Healthcare Foundation is no stranger to ridiculous litigation and other disgusting tactics.
For example, they (tried) suing Pfizer in 2007 over Viagra, claiming the the ads for it were indirectly a major factor in the AIDS epidemic. This followed their request to Pfizer to give millions of dollars to an anti-meth education program, which Pfizer didn't even really decline– the AHF submitted the request to the marketing department, and when told there was a specific department for grant requests and that they should submit it to that department, they chose litigation, instead of, you know, calling up the right department. Clearly frivolous litigation. Not sure what the status of that is-- can only find mentions of the lawsuit being filed, but nothing after that. I'm assuming it was probably dismissed.
They have sued the city and county of Los Angeles multiple times, trying to force them into adopting anti-bareback porn laws before they finally resorted to collecting signatures for a ballot measure, which was passed due to popular support, even though the city/county of LA refused to enact it themselves, because, of course, it's ridiculous.
Their main conviction against bareback porn is not really that the stars in the film should be 'protected', but rather that they feel guys who watch bareback porn are more likely to bareback themselves, which is not really supported by anything but looking at a graph of the number of bareback films and the rate at which guys are infected with HIV. Of course, this view ignores the fact that there is a greatly diminished fear of barebacking in general now that HIV is no longer a 5-10 year death sentence, that drugs are definitely a major part of the increases in transmission, and that a growing percentage of new infections is between heterosexual couples (in fact, estimates are that new cases are split almost half and half between gay and straight transmissions-- a telling tale given the much lower possibility of transmission with vaginal sex).
But, of course, they are well funded because they really do help people infected with HIV/AIDS get access to medication, hence why they are able to litigate in this manner.
