Should HIV non-disclosure be a crime? [View all]

[Kurska]

I recently had a very heated argument about this topic on another website and I wanted hear input on it. I understand HIV isn't a strictly gay issue, but as a gay man I wanted to hear gay perspective on it.

Based on my understanding of the law, if you know you are HIV positive and you don't tell your partner that before having sex with them you can be charged with a crime, even if you have a undetectable viral load, even if you use a condom and even if no actual transmission takes place.

Now I was initially supportive of this, but after hearing some arguments against it I'm not so sure. My thinking was that whether a person wants to have sex with someone who is HIV + should always be their choice. If you're positive you need to tell them and let them make the choice themselves. By not telling them you would be withholding life changing information from someone who could be making a life changing decision. I'm not cool with that so I'm hesitantly supportive of the law or at least the logic behind it.

However, the argument I heard seemed to amount to this. Sure lying about your HIV status is wrong, but a HIV + person isn't automatically responsible for another person practicing safe sex. If someone doesn't ask then it is wrong to force someone else to disclose. That you should only be responsible for yourself and getting infected was your fault for not asking and therefore not really caring. All this law does it create more stigma around being HIV + and further segregate them from the rest of society. The point of the law is to try and get the spread of HIV under control but it doesn't do that and actually only encourages people not to get tested (and hence be free of criminal liability) so they can keep having unprotected sex and not disclosing.

I'm not sure I'm 100% okay with that argument, but I can see the logic behind it. I like to think I'm sensitive to the already enormous social stigmatization that comes with being HIV +, but I came out of that argument feeling I was being insensitive to the plight of HIV + people.

I would really like some input on this.