Tennessee Agrees To Remove Sex Workers With HIV From Sex Offender Registry
Tennessee Agrees To Remove Sex Workers With HIV From Sex Offender Registry
For years, Tennessee has required anyone convicted of prostitution while HIV-positive to register as a sex offender for life. To settle DOJ and ACLU discrimination suits, the state has agreed to reverse course.
Michelle Anderson, a Memphis resident who is one of the plaintiffs in the ACLU lawsuit, said in court records that since being convicted of aggravated prostitution, the sex offender label has made it so difficult to find a home and a job that she was “unhoused for about a year” and has at times “felt she had no option but to continue to engage in sex work to survive.”
This is an obvious consequence, and the fact that people were put on the sex offender registry anyway makes me wonder if anyone involved gave a shit about prevention. It's like laws targeting sexual grooming of kids that pick on the conservative target of the week instead of figuring out policies that have been statistically proven to prevent sexual abuse.
It's like laws targeting sexual grooming of kids that pick on the conservative target of the week instead of figuring out policies that have been statistically proven to prevent sexual abuse.
That's because republicans don't want to implement policies that stop SA of minors because that would get in the way of what they want to do. Hell, they're actively stopping laws banning it to come into affect and using shit logic like saying it's because they're "pro-choice" 🤮
Least auful Tennessee law.
FWIW I think they're also they first state to legislate real protections for musicians against AI deepfakes
Music is probably one of their few exports to other states, so I can see why they would want to protect that.
I know I'm being hyperbolic
Go forth and spread HIV.
Both lawsuits argue that Tennessee law does not account for evolving science on the transmission of HIV or precautions that prevent its spread, like use of condoms. Both lawsuits also argue that labeling a person as a sex offender because of HIV unfairly limits where they can live and work and stops them from being alone with grandchildren or minor relatives.
“Tennessee’s Aggravated Prostitution statute is the only law in the nation that treats people living with HIV who engage in any sex work, even risk-free encounters, as ‘violent sex offenders’ subjected to lifetime registration,” the ACLU lawsuit states.
“That individuals living with HIV are treated so differently can only be understood as a remnant of the profoundly prejudiced early response to the AIDS epidemic.”