You’re absolutely right, this is something I’ve never heard of before! It kind of blows the mind, and this is a sad object lesson in how we as a nation sometimes let overblown national security concerns erode our civil rights. Witness the post 9/11 Patriot Act that handed unprecedented power to certain law enforcement and intelligence agencies to act outside judicial supervision. The Act was supposed to be temporary, but many of its provisions remain in force today and will remain in force for the foreseeable future.

I’m also thinking about HIV and AIDS issues. During the height of the pre-treatment epidemic era, many states passed special laws criminalizing sexual conduct for HIV positive people. Laws already on the books would have done a perfectly effective job of going after the very rare HIV-positive people who were psychopathic enough to infect people on purpose, but in the panic of the day, that wasn’t good enough for most state legislatures. They had to especially criminalize HIV transmission.

Today, we’re dealing with the legacy of those badly crafted laws. Almost all people who know they are HIV positive could not transmit HIV if they wanted to (given the current state of medical art), yet merely by having sex many of them are committing technical felonies.

A few years ago when California passed a law to correct this problem, the outrage that ensued was over the top. Conservative politicians screamed that liberals were encouraging AIDS, sexual promiscuity, and all sorts of other nonsense.

Yet nothing had changed. Prosecutors could still take advantage of several statutes to charge anyone who might actually intentionally try to spread HIV.

At least the ACLU is on the side of the angels with this one.I’m shocked beyond measure that they were okay with the American Plan.