Publisher's Note: One of the most significant things you can do to promote Liberty is to support our mission. Please make your gift to the 2024 Year-End Campaign today. Thank you! —Mark Alexander, Publisher

October 11, 2017

Californication Reaches New Lows

While reducing penalties for knowingly infecting someone with HIV, the state punishes anyone using “wrong” pronouns.

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.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.