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Brad McGuire & James Roscoe

Treasure Island Media is promoting a couple that includes an HIV-negative and an HIV-positive partner having unprotected sex as "role models." They are believed to be the first sero-discordant barebacking couple to be advertised as porn stars.

James Roscoe is HIV-positive, while Brad McGuire is HIV-negative. In a scene featuring Roscoe and McGuire on a Treasure Island website, Roscoe is the receptive anal sex partner or bottom.

"The two are a real-life, long-term, promiscuous, bareback couple," stated the company in a press release.

In the statement, which was dated October 27, Paul Morris, the studio's owner, spoke of demolishing "the HIV-positive closet" and said, "We know exactly what we're doing and we will not allow reactionary individuals and organizations to dictate our behavior. James and Brad are fitting role models for young gay men. They are living their lives with honesty and integrity."

In written responses to e-mailed questions, Morris told the Bay Area Reporter that coming out of the poz-closet "signals (for each man who has had the experience) a shift in the nature of the struggle: the virus is a fact of life for the poz man, no more or less manageable than other chronic life-long factors. The real battle is against prejudice, ignorance and unfounded and useless fear."

Porn showing sex without condoms, known as barebacking, isn't new. But there is concern about Treasure Island working to draw attention to the couple's sex practices without any apparent effort to educate people, especially young gay and bi men, about the risks.

"This is the first time a company has made it clear they're pairing up an HIV-positive and an HIV-negative couple, and so it raises some interesting questions," said Dana Van Gorder, executive director of the San Francisco-based Project Inform.

He said he'd like to see Treasure Island join with prevention agencies to educate people about what they should know when considering unprotected sex with a sero-discordant partner.

There's a "general absence of prevention messaging," said Van Gorder. "Gay men, and particularly young gay men, are taking a lot of their cues about what is safe or not safe and what are community norms as well around safe sex or barebacking from pornography, and so I think it's important to use this particular film as an educational opportunity."

Kyriell Noon, executive director of the Stop AIDS Project, questioned calling Roscoe and McGuire role models. He said he wouldn't advise other sero-discordant couples to follow their example.

"Consenting adults have the obligation and the right to make informed decisions about their sexual health," said Noon, adding that Treasure Island "should start a conversation about making informed decisions."

Those discussions, said Noon, should include the possibility of HIV infection.

Morris wrote in his e-mail that he's committed "to the notion that porn can't and shouldn't be reduced to an 'educational' genre. The unendurable loneliness, boredom and anger that young queer people experience can be dealt with only through the development of a flourishing creative and inclusively positive culture, not through a tighter control of expression and honest information. In good part due to the residual damage of ongoing and pointless viral-panic, young queers are taught that as they grow up their futures will be limited: they can look forward to being a strident safe-living prude, an assimilationist hetero-normative married person, or a drag queen."

Neither Roscoe nor McGuire responded to interview requests e-mailed to them.

Van Gorder does give Roscoe and McGuire credit for knowing their status and disclosing it to each other. He also noted that risk is lowered when the bottom is positive. Transmission is also less likely if the person who's positive is on effective antiretroviral therapy.

"They have made some decisions, as is entirely their right, about what level of risk they are prepared to assume," said Van Gorder.