<Because in one case, the risk is imposed from outside upon an involuntary participant.

I believe that people who are infected with HIV from a partner who has not revealed his or her tendency to sleep around ought to have both criminal and civil remedies available to them. (Reckless endangerment? Microbial battery?) If the risk is known, it's not a criminal matter.



Given your caveat on concealing one's infection, you make a good point.

Your remark about drug abuse being a behavior problem is on the money. Too bad we treat it as a criminal matter. Concealment rather than treatment becomes a matter not only of avoiding embarrassment, but avoiding prosecution.

I am not happy about the whole concept of the War on Some Drugs, which sets me apart from a lot of my favorite conservatives. I think the conservative movement may come around on this some day.

Think about the way gays are treated in some parts of the country, in the workplace, as renters, by civic organizations, by churches. What, precisely, excepting a true love which surpasseth all understanding, is the incentive to form a lasting monogamous relationship, which would also mean coming out to the community?



It's not so much the "tracking of disease" as the forced outing that's the issue. AIDS's spread to the heterosexual population is beginning to ease that problem.



Well, one incentive to form a monogamous relationship might be to avoid a lingering and painful death. Not sure why moving in with someone and forming a monogamous relationship, or just dating one person for that matter, would be any more of a "coming out" hazard than dressing in leather, cruising the bars and sex clubs, and hanging out in the bathhouses, which is how the "lifestyle" is lived up in the Castro district. The kind of behavior that encourages the spread of AIDS is not exactly discreet compared to two quiet guys sharing an apartment. Face it, promiscuous gay guys screw around because they prefer it that way.

The "let's put 'em all on an island and starve 'em to death" school of thought, which Ryan White most famously and courageously fought, though a fringe philosophy, is no help. We all remember, I hope, that during the Black Death whole families were sealed into their houses by civil authorities in some cities, particularly in Italy. In some cases these houses were set on fire by the frightened population. (It did nothing to stop the disease, which existed in three forms of varying degrees of contagiousness.) People would hide the bodies of their family members and try to lie or buy their way out of the house-as-mausoleum treatment.



Scaring the infected will make them less co-operative, not more. HIV is not only less opportunistically infectious than bubonic plague, but also much easier to hide. Even from one's self. For a while.



I haven't studied this, but I believe there are accepted methods that authorities can use to track medical records of AIDS carriers while preserving much of their privacy. How this information could actually be put to some use is not that clear to me. I'm certainly not advocating any kind of public "scarlet letter" arrangement, or any kind of quarantine. That's the kind of thing people like Fidel Castro, worshiped by the Left, do.