California’s New HIV Law
I’ve stated a number of times that in my opinion, the one positive thing you can say about Democrats is that they usually are marginally less offensive than Republicans. But this is is really, really bad:
Starting January 1, 2018, it will no longer be a major crime in California to knowingly expose a sexual partner to HIV without disclosing the infection. Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation on Friday that lowers the offense from a felony to a misdemeanor.
So… human nature being what it is… what do you think will be the result of reducing the disincentives to knowingly emposing a sexual partner to HIV without disclosing the infection?
More:
The California legislature passed SB 239 on September 11.
The law previously punished people who knowingly exposed or infected others with HIV by up to eight years in prison. This new legislation will lower jail time to a maximum of six months.
The new law also reduces the penalty for knowingly donating HIV-infected blood from a felony to a misdemeanor.
Bill sponsors Sen. Scott Wiener and Assemblyman Todd Gloria, both Democrats, argued California law was outdated and stigmatized people living with HIV, especially given recent advancements in medicine. Evidence has shown that a person with HIV who undergoes regular treatment has a negligible chance of spreading the infection to others through sexual contact.The most effective way to reduce HIV infections is to destigmatize HIV, to make people comfortable talking about their infection, get tested, get into treatment, now a days it’s not hard to do so, you can even obtain a free hiv test if you look in the right place.
The piece goes on:
Many Republicans staunchly opposed SB 239, saying it could lead to an increase in HIV infections.
Sen. Jeff Stone voted against the bill and strongly expressed his disapproval in September when the Senate voted on it.
Stone, who is also a pharmacist, took aim at Wiener and Gloria’s argument that modern medicine can lower the spread of HIV. The senator said three out of four people who are on prescription medication in the United States do not comply with their doctor’s orders on how to take it.
“If you don’t take your AIDS medications and you allow for some virus to duplicate and show a presence, then you are able to transmit that disease to an unknowing partner,” Stone said on the Senate floor.
Sen. Joel Anderson, another Republican who voted against the bill, argued that people infected with HIV could never live their lives “to the same extent” again. He said it was irresponsible not to disclose the possibility of a life-altering infection.
Moving on:
The bill enjoyed support from Californians for HIV Criminalization Reform (CHCR), a coalition of several organizations, including the ACLU of California, whose mission is to replace the “stigmatizing laws that criminalize HIV status.”
Rick Zbur, executive director of Equality California — one of the organizations in the coalition — told CNN his group was “elated” that the governor signed the bill and changed the state’s “archaic laws.”
“This is an important bill that modernizes California’s HIV laws,” Zbur told CNN. “It will really advance public health and reduce stigma and discrimination that people living with HIV have suffered.”
The Los Angeles LGBT Center also supported the bill. The organization’s director of government relations, Aaron Fox, told CNN the new law will see HIV-positive people “treated fairly under California law.”
Apparently preventing people from knowingly exposing others to HIV stigmatizes people who have HIV and is unfair. No word on how the victims of such behavior feel.
Assume rational behavior to begin with.
Interesting that Kimel gets outraged at California for its misdemeanor law yet makes no mention of the states that have no such law at all:
Texas and New Mexico and Arizona and Wyoming and Montana and and West Virginia and a dozen other states.
For some reason he has singled out his wrath for California. Who knows what sewers of outrage Kimel crawls through to scratch his itch — Breitbart, Drudge, FoxNews — and brings to deposit here.
Maybe we need more of the AngryBear prescription to coping with Title IX, abstinence sex education. Forget your exact quote but it was something like “keep your pecker in your pants”.
Jay,
That was Run’s comment, not mine. But without blaming victims, I do think it makes sense for people to take some responsibility for their own safety. Sure, I have the right to walk down any street in America at 2 AM waving a 100 dollar bill, but in many places that would be stupid. It would be helpful with HIV if people took more precautions, but that is likely if the other party claims to be clean.
BillB,
I have no familiarity with other states’ rules on the topic. I live in CA. But I think knowingly exposing someone to something like HIV is worthy of being a felony.
Also, you’ll notice that the source of the article is that notorious far right borderline Neo Nazi publucation called CNN.
Also, I think this is how the pendulum swings on other acts of predatory behavior too. A community finds that the behaviors of a few cause a lot of other people to become victims. Laws get passed to punish said behavior harshly. Partly as a result of those new laws, there is a decrease in the number of victims and public safety goes up. Then the perpetrators of the bad behavior start being seen as victims of the legal system. The community complains about the harsh treatment of that group and demands justice on their behalf. This results in more actual victims to the surprise of just about everyone in the community. Eventually, and it can take a very long time, ghetto community does another U turn and starts requesting stronger enforcement again. In the meantime, a small number of predators find it easier to victimize a lot of people.
I am guessing this cycle is less likely in TX and other states because until recently the gay community, which seems to be disproportionately afflicted by HIV has less pull in those states than CA.
I won’t defend the criminal action in question, but it’s consistent with how California treats assault in general. Simple assault is almost always a misdemeanor unless it is committed (generally) against people involved with the justice system including jurors.
HIV is no longer a death sentence.
I think it’s also reasonable to assume that this act should be charged as a more general sex assault or rape. Sexual assault also is generally a misdemeanor. It is reasonable to assume that most people would not consent to sex with someone who is HIV positive (although not all), so in any such case this would be rape (intercourse via fraud), which is always a felony.
This isn’t legalization.
Assuming that intercourse via fraud is a felony, then this gives a lesser charge for the DA to plea bargain with, Charge with rape and allow a plea bargain down in exchange for pleading guilty.
As noted HIV is not necessarily a death sentence like it was when the original law was passed, so that changing the nature of the offense makes sense, also given the state of the prisons in Ca what is the time such a felony offender would really spend in prison.
The minimum sentence is 8 years, but I don’t know how frequently judges suspend sentences or what the state of parole is.
Maybe if liberals had the same fervor for forcing people to carry around a personal STD label as they do for menu calorie labeling…..
It’s interesting that you use phrases like “gay community” and “ghetto community” in your defense. Actually not surprising at all.
This law was a relic of the hateful days, thanks to Ronald Reagan, when there were serious politicians talking about concentration camps and tattoos for gays. I guess we should be thankful they only went so far as a felony.
You might also ponder why for decades, to this day, the much more deadly behavior of drunk driving deserves only a misdemeanor.
Out of all the things in the world to get outraged about, it is quite revealing the stuff you repeatedly and consistently dig up out of the right wing sewers to single out.
In Texas these cases are prosecuted under the assault laws. Texas courts have determined that HIV infected semen can be classified by prosecutors as a deadly weapon. There have been a handful of cases that were prosecuted under this strategy, typically involving sexual assault cases.
Is anyone planning a post about Richard Thaler today?
The word “ghetto” is due to some glitch in spell checker. I didn’t notice it until it was pointed out. Notice the word “the” is missing from that sentence where the word appears.
if the bill reduces “stigma”, what stigma are we to understand here? An HIV individual still must disclose their status, so the stigma of having HIV probably isn’t the stigma we are to think of, since nothing changed for the law-abiding person who does disclose. If disclosing creates some stigma, that doesn’t change. The significant change is for those who break the law. They are no longer felons. If there is a stigma attached to being a felon, isn’t that a kind of good thing? To me a better justification for the law would not have anything to do with stigma, simply California’s expressed sense of the gravity if the act. I guess that is that exposing some unwitting person to HIV is less serious than it was in the past, which is fine so long as you don’t transmit the virus to that unwitting person.