Joe Biden plans on decriminalising spreading HIV

[Txyyxxxb]

I was going to post this in the Backroom to see what those who are HIV+ and enjoy bugchasing think (in fact I think I will), but nonetheless, Fox news suggests Joe Biden plans on decriminalising spreading HIV.

[think before following links] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-campaign-promises-included-decriminalizing-hiv-exposure

Thoughts? Is the article lying? What if it was true and the bill was passed how do you think it will affect the LGBT community and/or the straight community or just hookups and sex culture in general? Do you think more people wouldn't morally care about spreading it anymore since it's legal to do?

I would love to hear your thoughts.

[evilqueerpig]

A hint of how faux noise will be treating the Biden administration.

[kinkysuBB]

The levels of spin going on in that article would rival any of the rides at Disneyland.

Even if it were written in a straight line, this is a country where 9/11 levels of deaths are happening on a daily basis and with record high level of unemployment. I’m sure this is exactly what’s on top of Biden’s agenda... 

It’s quite telling that this is what’s on top of the media’s agenda. US media is hilarious. That’s not meant as a slur on the country in general. But between this rubbish and the incredibly easy ride Trump was given for 4 years, even by the left leaning media, it really is something.

[BootmanLA]

9 hours ago, Txyyxxxb said:

Thoughts? Is the article lying? What if it was true and the bill was passed how do you think it will affect the LGBT community and/or the straight community or just hookups and sex culture in general? Do you think more people wouldn't morally care about spreading it anymore since it's legal to do?

I would love to hear your thoughts.

I see no reason to assume the article is lying inasmuch as it's quoting things Biden has publicly stated. That said, every incoming president has a long laundry list of goals, only some of which get pursued with vigor and even fewer of which make it through into legislation.

More importantly: intentional transmission of HIV is a crime under state, not federal, law. In general, federal law trumps state law, but states have broad powers to criminalize conduct UNLESS there is a constitutional prohibition on doing so. That's why, for instance, it's now impossible for states to criminalize non-commercial consensual adult sodomy (because the Supreme Court has held that the Constitution prohibits this level of interference in private non-commercial activities of consenting adults). But as far as *I* can tell, there is no constitutional bar to state HIV laws, and so any federal law passed would largely be suggestive rather than binding.

With, however, the exception that the feds CAN make participation in certain optional federally funded programs contingent on passage of state laws that adhere to a federally-preferred standard. For instance, in the 1980's the federal government wanted states to all raise their legal drinking age to 21. They couldn't mandate it, but they made receipt of 10% of federal highway funding for states contingent on states raising the drinking age. Eventually, all of them did, rather than forego that money. There are limits - for instance, the Supreme Court has held that states couldn't have the entire federal portion of their Medicaid budgets contingent on adopting expanded Medicaid. Call this the "sticks" approach.

The other option is that the federal government can use a "carrots" approach - offering additional federal funding for, say, HIV health care costs if, and only if, states decriminalize HIV transmission (or rewrite the law so that it conforms to a much less onerous set of provisions. That, too, is a legal tool the feds have to push state policy in a particular direction.

[ErosWired]

19 hours ago, Txyyxxxb said:

Thoughts? Is the article lying? What if it was true and the bill was passed how do you think it will affect the LGBT community and/or the straight community or just hookups and sex culture in general? Do you think more people wouldn't morally care about spreading it anymore since it's legal to do?

Setting aside the political and media issues around this release (Fox News is, after all, a propaganda mill by any standard of professional journalism (not talking out my ass - got my degree in journalism in 1989)) I will instead respond to your question as though the news is accurate.

Frankly, I don’t imagine that decriminalization would make that big a splash in either the LGBT community or the straight community, because I don’t believe criminalization has ever been a major deterrent to begin with - the vast majority of people are not psychopaths who wish to intentionally give another person a dreadful disease. That is to say, criminalization hasn’t done much to prevent hookups, nor indeed to stanch the spread of the virus. Between 2008 and 2019 a total of 411 prosecutions for criminal transmission of HIV (or the attempt) were made by state and federal jurisdictions. The vast majority of these cases involved conduct that was either consensual or has no risk of transmission. The Center For HIV Law & Policy offers this chart of all these cases:

[think before following links] https://www.hivlawandpolicy.org/sites/default/files/Chart of U.S. Arrests and Prosecutions for HIV Exposure in the United States (June 2019)_0.pdf

The attempt to dismantle these laws is not new. In 2011 and again in 2013, the Repeal Existing Policies that Encourage and Allow Legal HIV Discrimination Act (H.R. 3053), also known as the REPEAL HIV Discrimination Act, was introduced in Congress, each time with more than 40 co-sponsors. Each time, the bill died in committee. Studies have demonstrated that these laws are ill-informed, ineffective, contribute to stigma, harm efforts at disease control and prevention, and are often disproportionate and draconian in their penalties.

All of which is to say, it’s long past time to reform these lousy laws that put an Undetectable guy wearing a condom in the pen for 25 years for not disclosing his status (!)(!!), and did nothing to deter the handful of real psychopaths prosecuted from committing their crimes.

You ask whether people will no longer morally care about infecting someone else if it’s legal. It may not be illegal, but it’s still going to be seriously harmful, and most people have moral and ethical scruples against intentionally hurting others. Knowing right from wrong is a kind of internal compass, not always dependent upon legal codes. Personally, I’m going to disclose every time, law or no law, because any Man who chooses me for his fuck has the right to know if he is at risk or not, and I have the obligation to tell him - not because I’m subservient to him, but because he’s a human being and so am I. People may change their laws on the basis of shifts in morality, but they seldom change their morality due to shifts in their laws. 

ART and PrEP, along with U=U, have changed the parameters of the discussion in a big way, one that I think renders any argument supporting the old laws exceedingly weak. What may sustain them is bias, prejudice, stigma and ignorance, which infect and ravage the United States today worse than any plague.

[ejaculaTe]

10 hours ago, ErosWired said:

ART and PrEP, along with U=U, have changed the parameters of the discussion in a big way, one that I think renders any argument supporting the old laws exceedingly weak.

Bareback Sex in the Age of Preventative Medication: Rethinking the ‘Harms’ of HIV Transmission, 84 J. Crim. L. 596 (2020), accessible at [think before following links] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0022018320974904. (Credit to @seaguy for tweeting on the article's publication.)

[PigBoyDallas]

I had to laugh when I saw this was on Fox News. I don't trust or believe anything they have to say. Living in Texas I know there's been instances of overzealous prosecutors going after guys for this sort of thing to score political points and win elections. With Prep now I guess these kinds of things happening is getting rarer and rarer but I'm sure it probably happens. HIV/AIDS isn't the death sentence it once was so maybe it's time to back off on the penalties, but I don't know there'll be many politicians willing to risk their careers on it.