By Patrick DePoy, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:16am
This week, Washington will host the 2012 International AIDS Conference. This is the first time since 1990 that the U.S. will host the major international gathering on the AIDS epidemic. The reason for this is that in 1987, Congress passed legislation prohibiting people living with HIV from traveling into the United States. Under the ban, those living with HIV were listed as having a “communicable disease of public health significance.” Rooted in the fear and prejudice that was an ever-present reality in those days, the ban imposed an unfair burden on tourists, short-term visitors, and foreigners seeking to live in the U.S. In 2009, President Obama finally lifted the travel ban, following a 2008 statutory repeal vote in Congress, correctly pointing out that if the U.S. wants to be a world leader in the fight against HIV/AIDS, “we need to act like it.”
Earlier this week, PBS aired the documentary Perpetuating Stigma about the ongoing criminalization of women with HIV. Through the stories of several women impacted by HIV criminalization — the use of criminal law to target people diagnosed with HIV for prosecutions and imprisonment — the documentary movingly illustrates how such laws dehumanize and stigmatize women living with HIV. But because of the opposition of the Alabama Department of Corrections, the producers of “Perpetuating Stigma” never got to tell the story of Dana Harley.
By Ian S. Thompson, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:18pm
Spit as a deadly weapon? As crazy as it sounds, in some states that is the reality that people living with HIV face.
On Friday afternoon, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) introduced legislation in Congress that will bring some much needed attention to the issue of criminalization of HIV. Rep. Lee's legislation — the REPEAL HIV Discrimination Act — would provide states with incentives and support to reform outdated criminal laws that target people living with HIV.
By Ian S. Thompson, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 6:54am
Late last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provided an important status update about ongoing research studies examining the lifetime ban on blood donations from men who have ever had sex with other men since 1977.
Gay and bisexual men, intravenous drug users, people who have had sex for money and people who have tested positive for HIV disease are currently the only groups of people banned from donating blood. Gay and bisexual men are excluded regardless of their individual sexual histories or HIV risk. Despite the lifetime ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men, other individuals who are also at increased risk for HIV disease, including people who have heterosexual sex with someone who they know to be living with HIV or people who have had sex with a commercial sex worker, are prevented from donating blood for only one year.
Yesterday, organizations combating HIV/AIDS received support to continue and strengthen their work with one of the populations most vulnerable to infection. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the "anti-prostitution pledge," a part of the U.S. Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act. The law required nongovernmental organizations receiving U.S. funding for HIV/AIDS work to declare — or pledge — that they opposed prostitution. Most alarmingly, the pledge extended to all parts of an organization's work, even parts that didn't use U.S. money.
The theme this week was "without": combating the spread of AIDS without actual tools and information to combat the spread of AIDS, searches without warrants, protections for business without protections for everybody else, government bureaucracy without privacy or security, accessing medical marijuana without federal government interference, sentencing without (or at least with a lot less) unfairness. That last one is good, the rest not so much....
