You can now infect and be infected with Hiv/Aids in California, the leftist second capital.

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Bill would amend CA’s HIV criminal statutes
By thepridela - February 3, 2017


Legislation to be introduced Monday would update California’s laws criminalizing HIV, which were adopted during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, so that a person could not be prosecuted for intentionally transmitting the virus if their sex partner tested negative for HIV.

Under current law, HIV-positive persons may be prosecuted for engaging in unprotected sexual intercourse with the specific intent to transmit HIV even if no actual transmission of the virus occurs. If convicted, they could be sentenced to up to eight years in prison.

Another law on the books targets sex workers who are HIV-positive. If the person is convicted of solicitation, even if they did not engage in intercourse, they can be sentenced to prison for 16 months or longer. That would no longer be the case under the proposed legislation.

The statutes need to be updated “because people are being prosecuted and incarcerated for no good reason under the existing HIV-specific criminal laws in California. It is unjust is the number one reason,” said Scott A. Schoettes, the HIV Project Director at Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, in a phone interview Friday with the Bay Area Reporter. “The second reason is we want to have laws promote public health not injure public health prevention efforts. Right now that is what these laws do.”

AIDS advocates have long contended the laws are outdated and, rather than protect public safety, provide incentives to people to not know their HIV status. Yet for years lawmakers in Sacramento have refused to carry legislation to amend the state’s existing penal codes that target people with HIV.

“We have been working to get this issue on the radar of legislators in California for the last couple of years,” said Naina Khanna, who is living with HIV and is executive director of the Oakland-based Positive Women’s Network-USA. “It is a tremendous opportunity to advance human rights and the dignity of people living with HIV while aligning public health efforts with current science.”

https://thepridela.com/2017/02/bill-amend-cas-hiv-criminal-statutes/