Laws against potential HIV exposure have filtered back down to college campuses, and a new student’s story is at the center.
September 06 2018
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In many states,
HIV-specific laws continue to perpetuate stigma while working against
modern public health policies. These laws make potential HIV exposure a
felony and continue to put innocent people in prison for simply having
sex while HIV-positive — even if they’re undetectable, which means they
can’t transmit the virus, or if no risky sexual interactions took place.
When these state laws were first enacted, HIV fear-mongering poisoned
the media pipeline and it was framed not only as a “gay disease” but
also as the death sentence it once was. Such state laws began taking
effect in 1986 and increased dramatically after the passage of the 1990
federal Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act, which
mandated states enact criminal laws to prosecute anyone with HIV for
knowingly exposing someone else to it. Many of these laws equate HIV
exposure (not necessarily transmission) with murder, demonstrating the
depth of fears about the virus and poz people.
Even as antiretroviral medicines entered the market a decade later,
these laws remained on the books. Today, HIV treatment can suppress the
virus to such low levels in the bloodstream (that’s “undetectable”) that
it becomes impossible to transmit HIV to sexual partners. Yet that
hasn’t changed the language of HIV criminalization laws in dozens of
states.
Now, a new generation is being punished — one that never saw the AIDS
crisis up close — young gay and bi men of color especially, who have
always known HIV to be a treatable chronic condition. Under this scope,
it’s even harder to concede that having sex while poz can be a crime
justifying decades behind bars (several poz people have been sentenced
to 30 years for allegedly having sex without disclosure).
Ariel Sabillon, a queer-identified son of Honduran immigrants in
Florida, has been a staunch advocate for HIV and immigration reform.
During the past legislative session in his state, he helped to stall
House Bill 9, an anti-immigrant law that banned “sanctuary cities.” He
is also part of the Florida HIV Justice Coalition to modernize HIV crime
laws.
The first in his family to go to high school and the first to go to
college, Sabillon now awaits a decision that could threaten his future.
At a large public university in Florida, a male student alleges that
Sabillon didn’t disclose his status to him before they had oral sex
(because the case is ongoing, Sabillon can’t name the school or his
accuser).
Sabillon, who is poz, was already undetectable and clearly educated
on sexual health before hooking up with the student last January. He
even tried to educate the accuser before things escalated.
A few weeks after they met up, “he randomly texted me,” Sabillon
says. “He’s like, ‘Yo, do you have HIV?’ And I said, ‘Yeah. Honestly,
yeah. I’m undetectable, so you’re fine.’ He freaked out and I was like,
‘Why are you freaking out? The science is there.’ He’s like, ‘The
science is wrong. There’s still a chance, even if you’re undetectable,
even if it was oral sex.’”
Sabillon tried to explain there’s virtually no risk of contracting
HIV through oral sex (unlike other STIs like syphilis or chlamydia), but
the student turned aggressive and threatened to report Sabillon to the
dean of the school. He was also going to get tested for HIV.
“He’s like, ‘If I test positive, I am going to report this to the
authorities.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, but that won’t be necessary, because
you’re not positive. You’re fine.’ [But] it scared me,” Sabillon admits,
suddenly worried about the damage his accuser could do. “I was like,
‘Oh, shit. I could have really fucked up everything. I could just lose
everything right now.’”
Under current laws, HIV is easily interpreted as a deadly weapon
wielded by poz people who have sex with, spit on, or otherwise share
bodily fluids with someone who believes they are HIV-negative — again,
even in situations where these exchanges have virtually no chance of
transmitting the virus. Twenty-four states in the country have laws that
require poz people to disclose their status to sexual partners, while
14 states require disclosure to needle-sharing partners. Twenty-five in
total criminalize behaviors that pose very low risk for HIV-negative
partners (like oral sex), according to the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention.
Some states are leading the charge to update laws that criminalize
HIV. Earlier this year, North Carolina amended its legal language so
that if an HIV-positive person is virally suppressed for at least six
months, they no longer need to disclose their status, nor can they be
charged for having condomless sex with an HIV-negative partner. (While
this language clearly does not protect those newly diagnosed — treated
under six months — legislators say that it’s at least an improvement and
continue to advocate more changes.)
Last fall, California governor Jerry Brown signed into law
legislation reducing the penalty for “exposing” a sexual partner to HIV.
It’s no longer a felony, and is instead now legally viewed the same way
as other serious communicable diseases.
A couple months after Sabillon and the accuser’s exchange, Sabillon
recieved a letter from the university stating he’d been accused of
“allegations regarding transmission of HIV.” That’s when Sabillon says
he “just fell apart. I didn’t know what was going to happen, really.
[Then] a week or two later, they called me for an investigation.”
Sabillon and the accuser had to present their cases in front of the
dean. The first time he went in, Sabillon was by himself and was told to
present his Grindr profile to school authorities, all of whom he says
lacked any education about MSM sexual health. For example, one
questioner asked Sabillon what a “top” and “bottom” was.
The accuser continued “saying that I was a menace to the community,
that I was putting the community at harm, and, ideally, he didn’t want
me to get an easy punishment, like write an essay. He wanted me to
really get punished for what I did,” Sabillon shares. “It was a lot of
bullshit that he just threw in there trying to take me down.”
The second time Sabillon appeared in front of school authorities, he
brought a doctor in with him who presented facts about HIV transmission
to prove there was no risk. “[The accuser’s] defense was like, ‘Well,
the science doesn’t say that there’s 100 percent no risk.’ And my
defense was pretty much like, ‘Doctors literally cannot say that.
Science cannot say with 100 percent certainty [about] most anything.
This is not how science works.’”
School officials are now compiling a final report, which will
ultimately determine Sabillon’s fate and future at the school.
Regardless, he could risk being faced with an endangerment charge on his
school record. (For now, the accuser has not attempted to file criminal
charges.) While Sabillon remains optimistic that school officials will
make the right decision, he hopes to use this experience to help educate
the state’s lawmakers, but also society at large about the dangers of
stigma.
“You shouldn’t be afraid of abating our laws, our social norms, the
way we live our lives. We shouldn’t be so afraid of change, and I think
that’s what’s happening in the world today, where the world is changing
so rapidly, and us as humans, we don’t like change,” he says.
The added difficulty of being one of few persons of color on campus
in a predominantly white institution is not missed on Sabillon, who also
fears getting family members deported. His dream of graduating and
succeeding to pull his family out of poverty also now feels at risk.
“If [the accuser] even decides to go to press charges, I think that
[he] will be eliminating someone from the community — or will be locking
them away and ruining their life — someone that could have been very
beneficial, someone that could have been a tremendous asset for the
community,” he adds. “That’s not making the community safer, that’s
hurting the community.”
Sabillon says this isn’t just about HIV-specific laws. “I want people
to think about other things [as well]: When you lock people up for
minor drug charges. When you lock people up for being undocumented, even
though they’ve been here for years and years and they’ve done nothing
wrong. That doesn’t keep the community safe, that doesn’t keep anybody
safer.”
