Never let it be said that the state of California lets logic get in the way of its decisions. Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown signed a law last week that reduces from felony to misdemeanor the act of knowingly exposing a sexual partner to HIV. Also, people who donate blood are no longer obligated to let blood banks know that they are HIV positive. The reason for doing this is because … well, let’s face it — there is no logical reason for doing this.

Nevertheless, State Sen. Scott Wiener, one of the bill’s authors, tried: “Today California took a major step toward treating HIV as a public health issue, instead of treating people living with HIV as criminals. HIV should be treated like all other serious infectious diseases, and that’s what SB 239 does.”

Really? Was California treating HIV positive people like criminals before this law was passed? This statement sounds like an example from the Barack Obama Straw Man 101 manual.

There’s no question that carrying HIV is a significant burden. It’s a disease for which there is currently no cure, only treatments for symptoms. Patients must adhere to a lifelong diet of drugs and therapy to keep the virus in check. But thanks to medical advances, the effects of HIV can be reduced, and the virus is no longer automatically assumed to lead directly to AIDS, which just a few years ago was considered a death sentence.

Yet the price of carrying this illness is a responsibility to keep from spreading it to others. Some states carry heavy penalties for people who knowingly spread HIV to unsuspecting sexual partners. California is now saying that committing such a heinously selfish act is no big deal. It’s hard to comprehend a worse signal to be sent by the nation’s most populous state, though that’s not for the state’s lack of effort to send terrible signals.

The Golden State isn’t just sitting on the sidelines when it comes to issues of sex, however. California is totally on the case when it comes to “misusing” gender pronouns. Nursing home and long-term care facilities there can now be hit with $1,500 fines for “willfully and repeatedly” using the “wrong” gender pronouns with transgender patients. This is part of the state’s LGBT Senior Bill of Rights. It’s ironic that the state’s reduction in punishment for deliberately spreading HIV will probably lead to fewer people in senior care facilities, particularly given that sexual deviants are far more likely to contract it.

With this kind of backward thinking among the nation’s leftist elite, it’s no wonder that STDs are on the rise again after years of meaningful declines. Gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia were at historic lows just a few years ago, but the CDC warns that incidences of all three sexually transmitted diseases are rising again nationwide.

Part of the reason is because of a reduced lack of focus in communicating the ravages of these illnesses. But it cannot be denied that dumbing down the moral and medical cost of promiscuous lifestyles is also to blame. It’s often said that as California goes, so goes the rest of the nation. Let’s hope that’s no longer the case, because that state is going off the rails and the rest of the nation shouldn’t follow.