U.S. Democratic presidential primary candidate, Pete Buttigieg – a homosexual man and mayor of Southbend, Indiana – says that giving someone HIV on purpose should not be a crime.
Being asked by Anderson Cooper, a CNN pundit who also happens to be gay, asked Buttigieg about laws that penalize those who transmit HIV when they knowingly have the virus but choose not to disclose it. In doing so, Anderson said the laws were “antiquated.”
Buttigieg agreed and said, “It’s not fair and it needs to change.”
Laws requiring disclosure of HIV before sexual activity started to be passed in the 1990s after it was discovered that the deadly disease was being transmitted from one sexual partner to another, often when the already-diseased partner knew they were sick but would not notify the other party. In some cases, hundreds of individuals contracted HIV because a promiscuous and infected individual chose not to inform their partners of their contagious illness.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 19 states have laws penalizing sex without disclosure of HIV (other figures put the number at 26). The CDC championed such laws only a few years ago as necessary for public health. Additionally, federal law penalizes prostitutes and blood-donors for not disclosing their HIV status, although it leaves penalizing the intentional transmission of HIV in “casual” sexual encounters to the states.
Elizabeth Warren also agreed with Buttigieg, who advised easing up on transmitting HIV. Corey Booker, a long-shot odds candidate claimed that there was “no scientific evidence” that an HIV-positive individual intentionally having unprotected sex without disclosing it has anything to do with the spread of HIV.
Science, of course, demonstrates their opinions are as silly as fluid gender.
Two-percent of men in the United States are homosexuals but account for 59% of new HIV infections and more than 60% of other venereal diseases. They also have four to five times the number of lifetime sexual partners and are more than twice as likely to have “unprotected sex.” Science matters.
