So it seems that many of my fellow bloggers are weighing in on what is quickly becoming a major issue in the queer community: The Criminalization of HIV. For those not familiar with the issue, this is when someone fails to disclose their status before engaging in something that leads to someone becoming infected with HIV and as a result faces criminal charges. These charges have gone from aggravated assault, to sexual assault to murder. This issue seems to be p0larizing alot of people, granted I think most people blogging about this on GGT pretty much all take the general stance of this being wrong. But the reasoning behind these stances are diverse and so I am going to register mine.
I would like to state how I think people should disclose before sex. However I understand why people don’t. In a perfect world, no one would care and it would be as simple as “Hey just so you know I’m POZ”. Unfortunately we don’t live in a perfect world. So when a guy doesn’t disclose but uses a condom, it in my opinion falls under the basic risk we all take by having sex. That is why the whole motto of safe sex is to assume your partner is HIV positive.
People who know that they are HIV positive and don’t disclose prior to unprotected sex are more culpable. But just as culpable is the other person who goes ahead and as unprotected sex without a simple “are you neg?” or “have you been tested recently?” In this case the onus falls on the person who fails to take responsibility for their own safety. That is why sex is considered an adult activity. Adults are supposed to be responsible for their own safety. You can’t go blaming someone else for your mistakes. If you fuck up, you fuck up. Sex can be dangerous. If you get hurt because you don’t take precautions or use your brain then boo fucking hoo.
And then there are the one person who I feel actually has more culpability then the person they infect. If a person lies about their status. If a POZ guy is asked “are you neg?” and their reply is “yeah” then they have unprotected sex they have some amount of blame in all of this. The person who becomes infected is guilty of believing a liar, where as the person who lied, is well a liar.
But now comes the question. Does any of this mean that someone should be labeled a sex offender? Or a murderer? The answer is no. A person lies, and someone gets hurt. Is the liar a horrible person? Perhaps. But a criminal? The reality that is while not a walk in the park, live as an HIV person in Canada is not a death sentence. And the stigma that will result from treating people who infect people with HIV whether intentionally or not, like they are cold blooded sociopaths or brutal rapists will result in more infections then ever. Stigma leads to people not being tested. People fear the results of the test and so they avoid the test. The same goes for men and prostate cancer, women and mammograms. Why would we want to do anything that could lead to less people getting tested. If you don’t know your status you can’t knowingly infect others. Two thirds of positive people don’t know their status. Do we want to increase those numbers? Not even going into facts like people who don’t know their statuses are more infectious, and less likely to take precautions.
We as Canadians can not allow ourselves or our government to call for this black and white notion of blame and victimization. He infected his trick with HIV therefore he is a criminal and the trick is a victim. Men rape their daughters and the charges are less then murder. Should we not use the man power and resources put into persecution of these people into fighting for testing, safer sex education, and fighting the stigmas to stop these instances from happening? The mentality of demonizing HIV positive people is so fucking Reaganesque. We fought to keep the government out of our bedrooms because we are ADULTS capable of assessing the risks of our activities. How about we start acting like adults? How about we take responsibility for our mistakes? How about we act our age? How about we not rely on an eye for an eye mentality?
