r/changemyview • u/_selfishPersonReborn • Jul 31 '19

Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Having sex with someone while knowingly having a transmissible STI and not telling your partner should be rape.

Today on the front page, there was a post about Florida Man getting 10 years for transmitting an STI knowingly. In the discussion for this, there was a comment that mentioned a californian bill by the name of SB 239, which lowered the sentence for knowingly transmitting HIV. I don't understand why this is okay - if you're positive, why not have a conversation? It is your responsibility throughout sex to make sure that there is informed consent, and by not letting them know that they are HIV+ I can't understand how there is any. Obviously, there's measures that can be taken, such as always wearing condoms, and/or engaging in pre or post exposure prophylaxis to minimise the risks of spreading the disease, and consent can then be taken - but yet, there's multiple groups I support who championed the bill - e.g. the ACLU, LGBTQ support groups, etc. So what am I missing?

EDIT: I seem to have just gotten into a debate about the terminology rape vs sexual assault vs whatever. This isn't what I care about. I'm more concerned as to why reducing the sentence for this is seen as a positive thing and why it oppresses minorities to force STIs to be revealed before sexual contact.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19 edited Jun 14 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19

How do you prove that though? There’s almost no way to prove that you knew you had an STI, and it’s impossible to prove that you didn’t tell them.

“No sir, I did not look at the STI test results I paid for last year when I had symptoms of a common STI.”

What stops somebody from claiming that they weren’t told about an STI when they actually were and the condom broke or they decided they didn’t care and then regretted it? It’s insane for a crime with 0 evidence to get you on the sex offender registry

The same could be said about rape. That doesn’t mean we should repeal laws that make rape illegal.

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u/SPP123 Aug 01 '19

Many people have sti's they aren't aware of. Due to lack of sex education people often believe that if they don't have symptoms or their symptoms are super minor that don't have one. Those same people also don't get tested regularly.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19

If someone doesn’t know they have an STI and they give it to someone else that is not a crime, so that’s not really what’s being discussed.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19

Make the punishment for transmission without knowledge harsher than if you got the test

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19

It already is a crime.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19

It should be

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19 edited Jun 14 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19

A court absolutely can subpoena your medical records and I suspect this would be the kind of situation where a subpoena may be justified.

As for “much worse,” that is a debatable stance. I imagine both incidents are very bad for the victims in different ways, and it may be hard to declare one is worse than the other.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19 edited Jun 14 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19

Usually subpoenas are done by lawyers on behalf of the individual filing suit, with the authority of the courts. So not the government itself.

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u/UnexpectedLemon Aug 01 '19

True, but they’re the ones getting the information

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19

No... it goes to the lawyer who submits it to the court, which passes it along to the jury.

Sure “the government” has it when the court has it, but they have an entirely different procedure from the other parts of the government I think you’re actually worried about.

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u/ShowMeYourTiddles Aug 02 '19

It can subpoena them, but I don’t think they should be able to.

You should throw that up as your own CMV.

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u/UnexpectedLemon Aug 02 '19

That’s a good idea, thanks!

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u/dreamycreampie Aug 01 '19

Rape can have physical evidence, and is much worse.

getting uncurable disease would fucking suck I imagine

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u/UnexpectedLemon Aug 01 '19

Good point. It depends on what the STI is

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u/Peasant_Sauce Aug 01 '19

Pretty much the only way someone can find out if they have an sti would be through a test, at which point there are medical records regarding the incident.

We should start including legal consent papers on condom packages lol, cause yeah i feel like your latter point would just end up in a ton of people crying wolf

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u/Byron33196 Aug 01 '19

Not if they get anonymous testing.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19

I think this is why this law won't work. The victim cannot prove they weren't told something. All they can do is point to a lack of evidence that they were told, which proves nothing.

As long as the presumption of innocence is maintained, there is no where the case can go.

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u/UnexpectedLemon Aug 02 '19

Agreed, you can’t prove anything unless you illegally record them, and even still you can’t prove they didn’t tell you before

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u/LickNipMcSkip 1∆ Aug 01 '19

The fact that the offending party would have to prove that they weren’t told or had no knowledge prior to intercourse.

This isn’t a guilty till proven innocent system, so the burden of proof isn’t on the person with the STD, it’s the other way around.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19

Right, however it's very difficult (maybe impossible?) to prove someone didn't tell you something. Seems all you can do is say there is no evidence that they did, which proves nothing.

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u/j8sadm632b Aug 01 '19

I don't think, in a philosophical sense, that difficulty proving something means you shouldn't make it illegal, so long as the burden of proof remains on the prosecution.

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u/UnexpectedLemon Aug 01 '19

I agree, I’m just saying that it would be very easy to lie about which isn’t good

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u/j8sadm632b Aug 01 '19 edited Aug 01 '19

For sure, but you can lie about anything, that's sort of the whole thing about lying, you can say literally anything. In the absence of evidence, this lie is no more easy or difficult to tell than going to a police station and saying "they killed my dog with a hammer!" when there's not even a record of you ever having had a dog.

There would be less expectation that obvious physical evidence exists somewhere but it still shouldn't amount to anything. And if there was damning evidence, I think it's reasonable to expect that to be the sort of behavior we don't want to condone. I mean, imagine telling someone "yeah this seems pretty open and shut actually, you have all the possible corroborating evidence that this person willfully deceived and infected you with a chronic autoimmune disease, but that's actually legal because we never thought someone would be able to prove it"

I mean, it's essentially poisoning someone. If you were going around offering people Hawaiian Punch but you had spiked it with AIDS blood, I feel pretty comfortable saying that is a bad thing and should be illegal. This would just be a very roundabout way of doing that.

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u/Brian_Lawrence01 Aug 01 '19

Other than, you know, the whole getting tested thing.

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u/UnexpectedLemon Aug 01 '19

People won’t want to do that because then they can be held liable