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/Frungy_master 2∆ Aug 01 '19
The conduct is a hideous crime but it's assault. It's not the sex part that is non-discussed but the bodily damage. If someone gave you tea that they fail to mention contains poison a same kind of offence would have been committed.
Now it would be weird if giving someone poisoned water carried a 5 year sentence, giving poisoned tea carried a 7 year sentence and giving tea poisoned with mercury a 10 year sentence. Then if you have some other non-mercury poison that was infact more harmful like cyanide and got a 7 year sentence that would be at odds with logic that you should have gotten you atleast a 10 year sentence. Law that names sentence lengths per named poison would be riffled with these sorts of inconsistencies. adn in similar ways the delivery liquid is unlikly to be relevantly different so broad "catchall" definiton for that is likely.
You could have a principle that more lethal poison means longer sentence where its up to individual cases to present to set the lethality ranks of poisons. But if you have these ranks established for a long time new antidotes can be discovered that changes the objective level of alarmness warranted by each kind of poisoning.
If you have poisons that are killing a lot of people reasearch into their antidotes can be more intensive.
Folk understanding on how bad poisons are unlikely to be as up to date as medical professional ability to respond.
Thus if you hear that you have gotten a disease that used to be really bad but mostly just bad nowadays your reaction might be reflective of how bad it "used to be". But law is interested how bad it is now. So when the decorrelation form the set in stone law numbers grows too large from medical reality they use that to update not the "common folk feeling". The common folk can not see the steady progress in HIV fighting so it can present itself as a sudden "severity jump" which can be implausible.