Michelle Anderson, a Memphis resident who is one of the plaintiffs in the ACLU lawsuit, said in court records that since being convicted of aggravated prostitution, the sex offender label has made it so difficult to find a home and a job that she was “unhoused for about a year” and has at times “felt she had no option but to continue to engage in sex work to survive.”
This is an obvious consequence, and the fact that people were put on the sex offender registry anyway makes me wonder if anyone involved gave a shit about prevention. It’s like laws targeting sexual grooming of kids that pick on the conservative target of the week instead of figuring out policies that have been statistically proven to prevent sexual abuse.
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Both lawsuits argue that Tennessee law does not account for evolving science on the transmission of HIV or precautions that prevent its spread, like use of condoms. Both lawsuits also argue that labeling a person as a sex offender because of HIV unfairly limits where they can live and work and stops them from being alone with grandchildren or minor relatives.
“Tennessee’s Aggravated Prostitution statute is the only law in the nation that treats people living with HIV who engage in any sex work, even risk-free encounters, as ‘violent sex offenders’ subjected to lifetime registration,” the ACLU lawsuit states.
“That individuals living with HIV are treated so differently can only be understood as a remnant of the profoundly prejudiced early response to the AIDS epidemic.”
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Yeah, that’s why it’s treated very seriously legally, you can get prosecuted for assault. It just doesn’t make sense to put them on the sex offender registry for it. Additionally, if it’s done with the person without HIV being informed and consenting, I don’t see anything wrong with that. On top of that, there is sex work without any risk of transmission, if someone gives you a handjob or doesn’t make physical contact with you, it’s not a problem. People who purposefully transmit HIV are despicable, but a sex worker having HIV doesn’t make them despicable. If you contract HIV and then go into camming, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Did you completely skip the article or do you think that sex workers with HIV should be automatically marked as sex offenders?
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How I personally feel about people who aren’t careful about spreading hiv is different than what I think policy should be. Policy should be what works to prevent the spread of illness. Sometimes that means doing “nice” things for people whose choices we despise.
