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Intentional Transmission of HIV: OK in CA!
I cannot believe that I live in a state like this.
Governor Brown and his lackeys have determined that intentionally transmitting HIV is only a misdemeanor. Transmission of a life-altering, and eventually life-ending, disease has now been demoted to an afterthought.
Additionally, those who knowingly donate infected blood will also fall under the new reduced penalties.
They are right. This isn’t a gay or straight issue. This is a public health issue. When you have people who use their communicable illness as a weapon, you have people who also fall under criminal law. By removing this penalty, it also removed the aggravated portion of assault for people who are sexually assaulted. It necessarily reduces the stigma associated with other blood-borne illnesses.
This is a slippery slope toward decriminalizing other intentional transmission of communicable diseases.
Does this mean that a man who doesn’t tell his girlfriend that he has Hepatitis B cannot be prosecuted when he passes it on, simply because it won’t end her life immediately?
Even more frightening, does this limit prosecution in the future of crimes against patients when healthcare workers have been spat at and have been stabbed by their patients’ used needles? Will this weaken current legislation to protect the public?
The answer is a resounding yes. In California, the urge to protect the minorities has irrevocably injured the majority.
It might be time to support CalExit.
Published in Law
What in the world? What is the rationale offered by those who support this?
https://www.urbandictionary.com/tags.php?tag=neghole
and yes rule 34 applies.
Ok, my question is answered if you click on the link at the beginning of the op and read :) These folks are nuts.
But be sure not to call the person by the wrong pronoun. That’s a serious crime.
I worked a district car in the skid road area of Portland on some nights. I found a transient sleeping on the pavement, the temp with wind chill was about 17°. I put him in the back seat of the police car to take him to a warming shelter. He’s coughing up a lung and then he tells me he has TB. Beautiful, and there was no way to know if he had been missing treatments, was he carrying a strain that was now resistant. My supervisor made the appointment for me to be tested. The tests were good, I had no problem.
For those of you that ride public transportation in urban areas this is not something that receives too much attention. You should be aware of the fact that transients do not make all their medical appointments, and more of them carry TB than you know. Do not count on the fact that the authorities will inform you of this problem.
And TB is becoming treatment resistant. Fun stuff.
Wow. Just…wow. I do know that there are people in the gay community that are taking anti-virals prophylactically and chronically in order to avoid getting HIV. There’s a serious problem with that.
But that’s just something else. Wow.
Tucker was hammering on this tonight. Intentionally passing AIDS to someone: 6 months. Misgendering someone: 1 year.
California has a deep mental illness that it keeps doing this.
Based on the link, here’s the “rationale.” A serious penalty is imposed for those knowingly transmitting HIV. Irresponsible people who are concerned about their status are avoiding being tested in order to avoid the knowledge that could subject them to the penalty, but are presumably still having sex (or they wouldn’t be concerned about the penalty and would get tested). In order to reward these people for that behavior, the penalty is being lessened to encourage testing so the same people can go on having sex after they know their status, with a lesser penalty.
You cannot make this stuff up.
Indeed, but I was surprised that he didn’t get into how it applies to sexual assault or other cases. That’s even worse. Many times, that aggravating factor is one of the only things that provides justice for the victims.
I wonder about the language. If I obtain a sample of HIV from a lab, and then, after finding the most effective method of transmission, intentionally infect a bunch of people, is that still a misdemeanor? Or is it just for people who are infected?
The kicker is that this is also applicable to blood donation. As it is, some people use blood donation as a way to get free STD testing. You can donate and then wait for them to tell you that your blood is unusable.
However, in this case if you knowingly donate infected blood, you are only guilty of a misdemeanor. If that is the case, it will pass the burden of responsibility from the person donating on to the facility (Red Cross, local hospitals) if anyone should mistakenly receive infected blood. This is a huge problem.
Hospitals don’t test all donated blood for viruses and bacterial infections, including AIDS?
Yes. But there’s always the slight chance that some blood might still have a virus. Remember this one that slipped through the notice of the general public? People still ran to the Red Cross for blood donation.
I believe the language of the law pertains only to sexual contact and blood donations.
Fun stuff here:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB239
It also pertains to tissue donation, sperm donation, and breastmilk banking. There’s also some provisions for prostitutes, too.
Something for everyone!
Oof.
Even better: read the penal code. If one assaults a bus driver, one is subject of a fine up to $10,000 and imprisonment up to a year. Nurses? Only in emergent situations… up to 6 months and $2,000. This state is messed up.
243.3. When a battery is committed against the person of an operator, driver, or passenger on a bus, taxicab, streetcar, cable car, trackless trolley, or other motor vehicle, including a vehicle operated on stationary rails or on a track or rail suspended in the air, used for the transportation of persons for hire, or against a schoolbus driver, or against the person of a station agent or ticket agent for the entity providing the transportation, and the person who commits the offense knows or reasonably should know that the victim, in the case of an operator, driver, or agent, is engaged in the performance of his or her duties, or is a passenger the offense shall be punished by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars ($10,000), or by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by both that fine and imprisonment. If an injury is inflicted on that victim, the offense shall be punished by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars ($10,000), or by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year or in the state prison for 16 months, or two or three years, or by both that fine and imprisonment.
(Amended by Stats. 1997, Ch. 305, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 1998.)
Texas needs nurses.
I’ve been looking through the CA penal code. There is a specific provision regarding “gassing” corrections officers (throwing urine, feces, or other bodily products), but I haven’t (yet) read anything specifically regarding throwing bodily fluids (infected or otherwise) at people.
I’m starting to wonder where it even is.
Texas needs ratio laws. That is probably the only thing holding me fast to this state. My folks are ready to move if necessary, but I am not, mostly because of the ratios.
I genuinely do not know how nurses function with all of the restrictions on care while caring for 5 or more patients.
Ratio laws?
Patients : Nurse.
I think this refers to laws which put a limit on how many patients a nurse can care for at one time. In places without ratio laws, it can get ridiculous; nurses are human beings, after all, and a nurse who has to care for 8 or 10 patients at a time probably won’t give as good care as a nurse who only has to care for 4 patients at a time. Plus, she will feel totally overwhelmed most of the time.
Californians are probably not really this crazy but the gays are organized, powerful, well placed and single minded.
Ah, thought it was that, but wasn’t sure.
Sort of. Don’t forget all of the other absurd sexual laws that keep getting passed (transgender bathroom laws in schools, condoms mandated for the pornography industry, etc.).
The craziness echelon is an interesting one. This bill was pushed through by my representative, Scott Weiner. He’s actually one of the more moderate Bay Area Democrats (yes, I actually voted for him in the general election. Thanks to California’s primary/runoff structure, it was him or an even kookier progressive).
We know that the Bay Area is 90% liberal, but the majority actually are fairly sane (otherwise it wouldn’t be so rich). The problem is that the more moderate a Democrat voter is, the less they seem to pay attention to any policies not having to do with taxes or business restrictions. The result is that “moderates” like Weiner are fairly pro-business (and hated for it by ultra-liberals), but redeem themselves by enacting off-the-charts crazy social legislation that doesn’t affect their core constituents.
From the article:
The “disproportionately affects” logic will be the death of us. Recently, California decided to tone down the math requirements at community college, because, of course, people of color were failing math more frequently and thus were “disproportionately harmed”.
Guess what? Vision tests at the DMV disproportionately harm the elderly and the blind. Stop signs disproportionately harm people who have to drive longer to get to work. Should we get rid of those, too?
One more comment here:
I’ve got a number of gay friends and neighbors, most of whom are fairly affluent urban professionals (it happens when you live in the swank outskirts of the Castro District known as the “Swish Alps”). Almost none support this law.
The gay community in San Francisco can be roughly divided between “sane” and “crazy activist”. One major point for many bourgeois gay men is demonstrating to the world that they are normal citizens who are capable of co-existing in society without any special help or protections (aside from obvious discrimination). Obviously, a law absolving a HIV-positive man of the legal consequences of knowingly spreading his disease screams “we’re different after all!”
The problem, as always, is that while many in the gay community are likely embarrassed by this law, they’re unlikely to speak up against the radical activists in their own midst for fear of “betraying their own”.
In the 90s I knew of a sort of little movement among gay guys to purposely give it to people to increase the number of victims and thereby get more attention and funding to find a cure. This idiotic law is nothing more than a biological weapon, and California deserves everything it’s going to get. Sorry to the Ricochetti who live there, but it won’t be much longer until all the normal people leave.