"Freddy Krueger" <fkrueger@nightmare.net> wrote in message

If this were handled as a health issue that would happen.
I forgot the exact number, but look at the stur bird flu has caused
and look at the low number of deaths from it.

No, the rest of us who see this farce are called homophobic,
intolorent, bigot, nazi, LOL, or closeted faggots.

I remember when the gay community never wanted information
to be reported on aids. They were afraid a stigma may be attached to them.

The stigma has now grown, and so has the aids population.
When I read a reply from GMCarter, that is what I think of,
the denial, denial, denial.

Luckily we live under a set of laws that were founded on the protection of
the rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Most states in the
US have laws that make it a felony offensive to knowingly engage in unsafe
sex with out notifying the other person that you are HIV positive. Some
states require notification before any type of sexual activity takes place.
No state has as of yet enacted a law criminalizing the act of engaging in
consenting sex if the persons is unaware of there HIV status. Such a law
could be written and it most likely would be held constitutional we've all
heard the old saying "ignorance of the law is no excuse" but I do find it
highly unlikely that any state legislature will write such a law.

What might happen is that a civil court action would be filed based on the
grounds that the person that infected the female plaintiff was negligent or
showed criminal disregard for the safety of the plaintiff by not knowing
there HIV status. After all no one in America over 18 can make a valid claim
that they don't know what HIV is or how it is transmitted. The plaintiff's
attorneys could argue that any reasonable person who engaged in say the
highly promiscuous and unsafe sex that the defendant did, or that any
reasonable person who engaged in unsafe bisexual sex with another man would
know that they were at higher risk for contracting HIV and thus by not
getting tested showed a negligent unjustified disregard for the safety of
the plaintiff.

I agree that the cases that have made it into the press are those of men who
infected women. But I totally disagree with your conclusions as to why that
is the case. The reason is much simpler and can be traced back the earliest
days of the epidemic and right back to the present in how the government is
responding to AIDS in the African American community. Gays and Blacks are
not as valuable to the societies power holders as are young white women
that's the simple answer. What prosecutor really cares if one gay infects
another hell it's just a couple of fags no big deal. Or if the fastest
growing demographic as far as HIV and AIDS is women of color (which it is)
who cares it's just one black or latino screwing another black latino
there's to many of them gays and blacks anyway.

But if it's a group of young white women who were infected as was just the
case here in Washington state. We need ourselves a big statewide task force
to catch this Black man who's out there killing our white women. Yes he was
caught got a very speedy trial and was sentenced to I think 20 years per
charge and I think there were 7 or 8 women involved.

Don't get me wrong I do agree that it is and should be a crime for an HIV
positive person to have sex without disclosing there HIV status, but lets
not delude ourselves into thinking that Homophobia and Racism don't play
large roles in HIV and AIDS legal policy and enforcement in the US.

Now as to making it a crime if neither partner knows there HIV status that
while it might be legal is simply another extension of racism and homophobia
into the law. It would also be problematical to prove in court because of
the inability to prove when the positive person was infected which would
need to be established inorder for the act to be illegal.

If you really need such protections then the best way to go would be to make
all sex with out a condom illegal with the same penalty for both partners
regardless of there HIV status. Hell I bet if John Ashcroft was still around
you could convince him to add that provision to the Patriot Act II
legislation. He could set up the new federal agency C.O.C.C. or Central
Office of Condom Control each condom could have and RFID tag embedded in the
wrapper and another as part of the condom itself and if the condom didn't
raise above room temperature within a certain predetermed time after being
opened then a COCC squad would be computer dispatched to the location of the
condom as identified by the RFID tags embedded GPS system.

Gary Stein