Commentary
969
2006-08-29
2006-08-14
Is lying about
HIV a crime?
Australian
Michael Neal is a gay man’s worst nightmare.
He’s a sexually promiscuous liar who told
Australian
Michael Neal is a gay man’s worst nightmare.
He’s a sexually promiscuous liar who told
partners he was HIV-negative when he knew he
wasn’t. In some tragic instances, Neal even persuaded
his partners to have unprotected sex with him. Now
some of those men are HIV-positive.
Melbourne police
have charged Neal with endangering public safety, but we
believe going through with this prosecution would set a
perilous precedent. Of course it’s wrong to
fabricate a story about your HIV status, much less to
knowingly expose people to the virus. But it’s also
wrong to criminalize people for doing either.
There is a
criminal case to be made if it can be proved a person
intended to harm a sex partner by infecting them with
HIV. Laws against attempted murder already exist. But
prosecuting lying is not only impractical but
dangerous. If we begin jailing lotharios for simply
misrepresenting their HIV status, do we draw the line
at cancer-causing HPV, syphilis—the flu? If a
straight woman lies about being on birth control and ends up
pregnant, is she a crook? There’s no bottom to this
slippery slope.
Protecting
yourself from HIV is a matter of personal responsibility.
It’s a matter that should be outside the
jurisdiction of the criminal courts—except, of
course, in matters of rape or assault. In cases of
consensual sex, if we rely on words (which often turn out to
be untrue) rather than facts (condoms protect you from
HIV), we’re complicit in what happens to our
bodies. Not to mention that what goes on between two
consenting adults should not be fodder for government
control. As LGBT Americans we know this better than
anyone—and we also know the government
doesn’t always act in our best interests.
Lying just to get
laid is evil, but if you have any concern about HIV
infection and you haven’t seen your partner’s
antibody test results with your own eyes, it is your
responsibility to protect yourself. We risk our lives
when we sleep with someone. That’s the sad truth. At
that moment of decision when we weigh risk and
pleasure, we have a choice to defend our lives or not.
That choice—coupled with the knowledge we’ve
been given over the past 25 years—gives us
power. Relying on the government to protect you by
criminalizing bad boyfriends is a surrender of that power.
And we will never be an advocate for that.
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