Reply #28: Where condoms won't be worn: the sanctity of marriage [View All]

In recent years there has been a great increase in HIV infections among married, monogamous females. It seems that male spouses who become infected often do not wish to start wearing condoms because, if they've never worn condoms before, the change of habit might arouse suspicion.

About 15 years ago the California legislature worked up what was popularly known as a Spousal Notification Act, that would make it legal for doctors to notify a spouse when they were treating their marital partner for HIV. But by the time the lobbyists got through with it, it permitted doctors to notify everyone EXCEPT a spouse. The rationale was that if a person were promiscuous or shared needles with many people, they could be notified that they had been exposed to HIV without violating the privacy of the infected patient. But in the case of a non-drug-using, monogamous marital partner, such notification would immediately point to their only possible source of infection, their spouse, thus violating the spouse's privacy.

This is another reason I think marriage should be illegal. In marriage one "partner" can legally be forced to forfeit their life because the law doesn't want the other "partner" to even forfeit any of their privacy. This "partnership" is like the one between the taxpayers and Halliburton: all take on one side and all give on the other. I say, if you don't want to give up any privacy, don't get married.