The Conversation Starts Here

In 2009, I wrote extensively about the case of Bay City resident Michael Holder. Holder was charged, tried and convicted of failing to disclose his HIV-positive status to his girlfriend.

Holder is black, his girlfriend is white. During jury selection, several jurors made what can only be described as racist statements. They had issues with inter-racial relationships. Blacks, one said, were more prone to criminal activity. Yet, upon further examination by the judge, these deep rooted prejudices were considered mute, because the jurors promised they could set aside their attitudes to judge the case presented on the facts and facts alone.

The conviction was upheld by the Michigan Court of Appeals, the Michigan Supreme Court, a Federal District Court and in December a three judge panel on the Federal 6th District Court of Appeals.

I believe Judge Karen Nelson Moore hit the nail on the head in her dissenting opinion:

In my view, the assurances of impartiality given by jurors Flynn, Coppinger, and Moore are simply not credible given the racial biases revealed by these jurors and the underlying facts of this case…I believe that these jurors’ express aversion to interracial relationships created an unacceptable risk of actual bias. At the heart of this case was an interracial relationship between Holder and his white partner, Monica Kosecki, and the question of whether Holder informed Kosecki that he had HIV before the two had consensual sex. Jurors Coppinger and Moore made it clear that they found such interracial relationships to be unacceptable—at least for themselves and their families. Although both jurors told the court that they thought they could be fair and impartial, their tentative promises are untenable in light of their clear distaste for interracial relationships. Given the underlying facts of this case, Holder should not have been tried by a juror who considers interracial relationships to be beneath her “standard” or by a juror who believes that interracial couples should not have children because they result in “mixed breed” children. Accordingly, I believe that both Coppinger and Moore had actual bias and that their promises of impartiality should not have been believed.

Regardless of where one sits on the issue of HIV disclosure laws, the real issues here are about racism in the judicial system.

But that is not what Josh Cohen in Washington state thinks. In a blog titled, “Dishonesty in health disclosure: Michael Holder got justice,” Cohen opines:

The coverage on this case talks a lot about the potential bias from jurors, the lack of specificity of the Michigan law, which makes it a crime to fail to disclose your status prior to exposing someone, and the effects that this law can have related to stigmatization of HIV positive people.

What irks me is that there’s little discussion about the real victim here, Monica Kosecki.  What about her?  She’s not the criminal burglar who cheated on a spouse and infected her fling.  She’s now saddled with the additional burden of dealing with HIV.  She will also now face the stigma everyone is so worried about.  If the person who criminally gave it to her faces no consequences, how is she likely to behave in a similar situation?  If her own inner sense of ethics is not enough to convince her, she’s less likely to disclose.  If she knows that behavior will be punished, she’s much more likely to.

Where to start with the ignorance here?

First, Cohen ignores the fact that court records, which I reported on, clearly state the victim knew of Holder’s criminal past, and his marriage. In fact, the records and Holder’s own statements show that the victim was aware of this marriage and allowed Holder to move in with her anyway. So much for the innocent victim of the cheating husband meme.

But hey, why let facts get in the way of demonizing some one?

Cohen is, in a few short paragraphs, saying that HIV-positive people some how have MORE responsibility in preventing the further spread of HIV than do HIV-negative people.

I am appalled by such attitudes, particularly coming from the gay men’s community that is not infected by HIV.

A review of Cohen’s blog finds this is the only time Cohen mentions HIV. He has an extensive post about the space shuttle Columbia disaster. And lots and lots about the Washington State everything but marriage movement. But nothing about HIV. Is that Cohen’s own HIV-phobia?

One post in particular sticks out to me, and applies I think. After positing a quick reference to the founders’ vision of America and equality, Cohen then writes:

Those statements beg the same question of accountability to our movement. Are we really representing the needs of our entire community, or just a subset? Are we really governing with full consideration for segments of our community like the Transgendered? Or people who live in Arkansas? Or people who live in Washington State? Or people who live in Indiana? Or Bill’s who have tragically lost an “l”?

Evidently in Cohen’s mind, being gay and HIV-positive makes me a modern day pariah, or in his words: “uneducated, non-property owning men, or *gasp* women being allowed to vote too.”

His attack on Holder presumes facts not on record. Worse, it creates an unsaid expectation for HIV-positive people. Somehow, in Cohen’s mind, we who are infected, have more responsibility in preventing HIV infections than do our HIV-negative brothers and sisters. As I have said before, what happened to personal responsibility?

It takes two people to fuck (except in cases of rape, and I include drug facilitated sexual assaults including alcohol induced trysts as well). Both partners consent to the sexual activity.

As I have written before, public health agencies saw the largest decrease in new cases of HIV-infection in white gay men in the early 90’s. Why? I posit for several reasons.

First, and undeniable was the continued impact of watching the decimation of an as yet controlled epidemic chewing up immune systems.

Second, was that condoms and HIV information were readily available at every single queer event.

And third, public health organizations, in conjunction with the gay men’s community, created a public contract. That contract said, when you decide to fuck, you must presume, regardless of protestations to the contrary, that your partner was already infected with HIV and to behave accordingly. That agreement lead to a communal system of accountability.

But those fell by the wayside with the advent of anti-retrovirals. The weekly reminders of deaths disappeared, and life seemed renewed. This coincided with the new anonymity of the internet, a conversation in the poz community about barebacking, and the failure of the white gay men’s community to address the fact that barebacking was suddenly becoming important.

Then came the Bush years and abstinence-only education. Somewhere in the process, we shifted communal responsibility, and individual responsibility for prevention of HIV-infection away from our community as a whole and onto the positive community. This was reflected with public health’s obsessive focus on HIV-positives for prevention. And an obsession which continues today.

Cohen ignores this history, and ignores his own conceptions, and creates a new class of perceived less than citizens. The HIV-positives among us.

Is there a moral obligation to disclose one’s HIV status to one’s partner(s)? Absolutely. That same moral obligation stands with diseases such as herpes, (now linked to Alzheimer’s Disease), HPV (linked to anal, penile and cervical cancers), Hep B and C (linked to liver cancers) and more. Yet, in Michigan, none of those viruses carries a criminal sanction– only HIV carries such a criminal sanction.

But I posit that there is more at work here than simple ignorance. Cohen is operating on a level I suspect even he is unaware of. There is a kind of blame the HIV-positives for their condition mentality involved. Thus, a public flaying, such as having to disclose HIV status, is warranted. It is a scarlet letter of the modern world, and Cohen, who is presumably negative since he has not hint at understanding HIV stigma, discrimination and the subsequent violence that attaches itself to such disclosures, wants us to continue to wear the scarlet letter.

That scarlet letter is way to create an us/them dichotomy and thus fail to see a person’s own risk. It’s “those” people who get it. “Those” people should consistently be obligated to present their otherness no matter the risk to their safety or privacy. Thus, if “those” people keep themselves in their place, and are good faggots with their deadly virus, we can ignore them and box them in so we don’t have to face the crisis re-emerging in our youth, or rebounding in the mid-30s to early 40s age group.

Didn’t we walk this path once? You know, the Reagan era? When the Reagan administration ignored the brewing HIV crisis because it was “those” people? How did that work out for our community? How many were needlessly lost because precious federal resources were with held, or not even considered for release by Reagan and his right wing ass kissers? How many were lost because for years science was told to wait, while the epidemic raged?

How did that work out?