Reckless Endangerment - HIV crime is in the news again, as the Washington Post reports on a local case. Clearly, we have here a perpetrator acting with malice and an innocent victim. In the world of gay sexual encounters, we are still locked in the eternal debate of who is to blame, the poz guy who doesn't tell or the neg guy who doesn't ask. The Washington Blade waded into the controversy a couple of weeks ago by penning a broadside against HIV+ gay men who act with reckless indifference to their sexual partners. They raised hackles with the provocative and un-P.C. title "Sometimes gay sex ought to be a crime," playing for irony the continuing illegality of gay sex in several states. More interesting, though, was this signed letter to the editor in the June 14th edition:

I am outraged at your call for jailing people who test positive for HIV and don't say to their sex partners, "Oh by the way, I have AIDS." Viewpoints like this are why I have advised promiscuous individuals to boycott the HIV test ever since it came out. These laws will surely make many people regret taking the test.

I only have sex in circumstances like the woods and the sex clubs, where risk is presumed and nobody asks. If someone asks if I am "clean," I say that I am promiscuous by choice and could have something, but have no known infections and am untested. If people who choose a risky lifestyle avoid sex with monogamous and other low risk people, the disease can be contained without the kind of draconian measures you support.

The "traditional" wing of the gay community has enough enemies in the form of the "Christian Taliban" fundamentalists and the developers who want to close our clubs and parks to raise property values without the treachery of monogamous gays who want to jail drag queens and hustlers, raid the parks and clubs, force people to take HIV tests, and so on.

With as many enemies as we already have, we cannot afford to have traitors like whoever turned in that South Dakota couple undermining our security position.

Please reconsider this position and try to stop the sharp right turn the Blade has taken since its corporate takeover.

Never mind that sex in the parks is already illegal. You almost have to think this is a joke, the proverbial strawman argument that no one could believe. What on earth is wrong with someone who feels this way about a deadly disease? Getting sick as a political statement? I guess I betray my libertarian principles, but lock this idiot up!