CA State Sen Who Lowered Criminal Penalties for HIV Transmission, Says Lecturing About Sex Won't Stop Monkepox

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When a panelist on Fox News Business suggested that if you don’t want to get monkeypox, stop having gay orgies, he was berated by the rest of the panel and called a bigot, even by host Lisa “Kennedy” Montgomery. Ultimately, they agreed that “don’t have orgies” is good advice for everyone, and not something specifically gay men have to follow.

Back in May, the Associated Press reported monkeypox likely spread from 2 sex raves in Europe. Since then, research from the New England Journal of Medicine suggested that 95% of monkeypox cases have been transmitted through sexual activity. 98% of the infected were gay or bisexual men, and 41% had AIDS. The median age is 38, the median number of partners in the prior three months was five, and a third visited “sex-on-site venues such as sex parties or saunas within the previous month.”

But even knowing this information, State Senator Scott Wiener is concerned about the “sex shaming of gay men around monkeypox” and compared it to the shaming of HIV. “Lecturing people not to have sex isn’t a public health strategy. It didn’t stop HIV—it made it worse—& it won’t stop monkeypox. What will work is vaccination, testing & education.”

But isn’t lecturing about safe sex part of education? And what is wrong with condemning deplorable behavior that is spreading an illness?

Senator Wiener is known nationally for co-authoring a bill that lowered the penalty for exposing someone to HIV from a felony to a misdemeanor. He also pushed a bill that took away mandatory sentencing for having anal, oral, and digital sex with a minor, under the guise of it being discriminatory toward homosexuals when compared to other laws (as opposed to making both laws harsher).

During the covid pandemic, Wiener deeply believed in lecturing and even mocking anti-maskers, anti-vaccine activists, and people against lockdowns. He said they were selfish and “choosing to get other people infected with a deadly disease.”

If you need the monkeypox vaccine, there are specific requirements in New York. You need to be a gay man who is sexually promiscuous. It is possible to get monkeypox via close proximity, but it’s clear to the government that irresponsible gay sex is the government’s area of concern.

Monkeypox is not a disease that exclusively affects gay men, and it is possible to catch it by means other than intercourse. WHO’s expert panel voted 9-6 against the emergency declaration of monkeypox, but WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus overruled them.