Infection Alert! Oslo, Eastern Norway: Louis Gay

Louis Gay decided to make his 2012 arrest for failing to disclose his HIV status to his boyfriend an opportunity to become an activist. Like most people that oppose criminalizing failure to disclose, Gay has the disease that he is against being required to tell people about and has a history of having sex with people without telling them he has it.

On his blog, he defends himself with weak arguments like “I was prosecuted despite that I followed the advice given from health care organizations to HIV positive and HIV negative people in connection with oral sex…oral sex was considered safer sex between men despite use of condom and whether one has HIV or not, under certain precautions not to use toothpicks before sex, etc. All brochures and all international and national experts in HIV infection has always said the same thing: All the research shows that HIV transmission through oral sex is extremely rare and no common source of infection, so the investigation in this case shows.” As you can see, Mr. Gay did not learn his lesson. The problem was that it is, as he admits, possible to give someone HIV by performing oral sex on them. That person has the right to know if they are at risk or not.

Mr. Gay further defends himself by minimizing his behavior and calling his case “A threat to imprison me for something almost every gay does; oral sex without a condom.” I’m sure he is right about that, but he was not being threatened with imprisonment for having oral sex without a condom. He was facing imprisonment for having oral sex without a condom while knowing he was HIV positive and not telling the man whose cock he was sucking.

Like a lot of HIV offenders, Gay tries to distract people from the truth with smoke screens. These external maneuvers try to convince people that doing the right thing is not right because other might do the wrong thing in response….

Gay goes on to say:

“We were a hair’s breadth away from that a conviction in a court of law could have broken all contact tracing among men who have sex with men with a single blow. “Everyone” has oral sex, so who newly infected with HIV would have given up their sexual partners to the doctor for tracing if one can be convicted for sucking? It’s something all gays do. Who would dare to expose themselves to prosecution and punishment? And again it is just as obvious that the testing of HIV will suffer when you can be punished even for oral sex. Any gay is then a potential criminal, because “everyone” has oral sex and “everyone should have reason to believe” that one can be infected with HIV, while almost no one uses condoms for oral sex, as studies show. Who will dare to HIV test?”

This conviction would not have broken contact tracing between gay men. Maybe if the men were afraid that it would prove they failed to tell someone they had HIV, but it is not a defense to failing to disclose to say that if he were required to disclose people that don’t want to disclose would not want to get tested. There is no excuse not to get tested if evidence presents itself that you might have HIV. Gay is just coming up with excuses to justify excuses that are ultimately based on defending poor choices.

Mr. Gay’s case was eventually dropped after he says that tracing tests proved that his victim got HIV from someone else and therefore he did not put him at risk. Good point, one cannot put someone at risk of having an incurable STD if they already have it. The problem here was that Mr. Gay did not know that the other guy had it, but knew that he did have it. That is where Mr. Gay is wrong.