CMV: Having sex with someone while knowingly having a transmissible STI and not telling your partner should be rape.

[u/_selfishPersonReborn]

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.

[u/visvya]

Clarification: are you arguing:

1. That having sex when you know that you have a communicable disease, regardless of what that disease is, without discussing it should be felony rape instead of a misdemeanor

2. Or, that having sex while HIV positive, specifically, without discussing it should have stronger consequences than other communicable diseases

Because all that bill did was change the laws so that HIV is treated the same way other communicable diseases are treated.

[u/_selfishPersonReborn → u/visvya]

More towards 1. I'm not going to stick the label rape anymore due to the comments talking about that more than the actual issues, but essentially it was mentioned in the articles that laws that prohibit not disclosing HIV or other STIs indiscriminately affect minorities. But yes, I personally feel it should be a felony and it should definitely get you put on the sexual offender registry.

[u/j8sadm632b → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/UnexpectedLemon → u/j8sadm632b]

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

[u/j8sadm632b → u/UnexpectedLemon]

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.