In the Life: Ep. 2003, "The Cost of Stigma"

[Narrator] "In the Life" is funded in part by... the H. van Ameringen Foundation... Patricia Kind in honor of her brother Henry van Ameringen... arcus Foundation... The Estate of Richard W. Weiland... GILL Foundation... Wyncote Foundation... Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and by the annual support of "In the Life" members like you. [Host] Across the United States,  criminal laws are singling out people with HIV. [Darren Chiacchia] Like it or not, true or not... the accusation in the police report was that I had not disclosed my HIV status. [Host] These statutes create an illusion of safety  by shifting the burden of responsibility for safe sex on to those who know they are HIV positive. [Sean Strub] They undercut the most fundamental   message about sexual health which is that each of us must be  responsible for protecting ourselves. [Host] Tonight on "In the Life," the human cost of criminalizing HIV  transmission and exposure. [Jose DeMarco] As people of color that report, this is how we've lived our lives. This is what happens when I'm in and when they go to jail- they get the harshest sentence. [Host] Then...the connection between bisexuality and women's health. [Deborah Coady] Women can be bisexual and they don't have to be either gay or straight and so that's...that's complex. ["In the Life" main title music playing]. [Silence]. [Music playing]. [Darren Chiacchia] Like it or not, true or not... I have been welcomed to the world of living as an HIV positive person. [Music playing]. The accusation in the police report was that I had not disclosed my HIV status prior to conducting this relationship. [Music playing]. The sentence associated with this could be as much as 30 years in prison. [Music playing]. [Host] More than 30 states have statutes criminalizing  the exposure or transmission of HIV. This patchwork of legislation varies state-to-state, both in terms of punishment and what behaviors are criminalized. [Carol Galletly] In the '90s the Ryan White Care Act made it necessary for states to certify that they had some   sort of legal mechanism to address intentional  exposure with HIV. [Sean Strub] About half the states said, you know, "We have assault statutes." "We have public health statutes. We're fine." Uhm...and then about half the states went out and created a patchwork of crazy legislation . [Galletly] Very few of them limited it to intentional transmission or exposure. Instead what they did was created far more broad laws that said, if anybody didn't disclose if they had HIV and had sex with someone or some variation of what they call sex, then it would be against the law. [Strub] People call them HIV transmission statutes. They're not about transmission. Almost all the prosecutions are about failing to disclose. Uh...so if a person with HIV cannot prove that he or she disclosed to a partner uh...then they're at risk. [Music playing]. [Baron Coleman] Darren was accused by a former lover who was not a one-night stand, was not a one-week stand. This was a relationship that went on for months. Darren's being charged under  Florida Statute 384.24(2)- targeting specific individuals  who are HIV positive, who are having a sexual  relationship with somebody and have not notified that person that they're HIV positive. It doesn't matter whether somebody was exposed. It doesn't matter whether somebody used a condom. Doesn't matter whether you're trying to pass on the virus. It just matters your "status" and whether or not you  had sex and conveyed your "status." [Chiacchia] This is someone I was actually planning on spending the rest of my life with. We were shopping for multimillion-dollar farm and so you can only imagine the shock of all this. [Coleman] The relationship goes bad. The gentleman tries to reconcile with Darren on up until the last moment and when Darren finally says, "It's over.    Not ever gonna come back together." "You know, I need you to leave the house." Within an hour or two he's down at the sheriff's office filing a police report. [Music playing]. [Chiacchia] I'm in the horse business but every horse is attached to a few people. So this is a people business. [Music playing]. The story on the street is I have AIDS and gave AIDS to this... you know, poor unsuspecting kid. He's not a kid. He's a grown man and has a successful career. I don't have AIDS and he...not only doesn't   he have AIDS, he's not HIV-positive. [Coleman] Any criminal charge is awfully serious but when you're facing a criminal charge for something that has such a negative stigma, and I'll use Darren as an example... you know, he gets sponsorships pulled, he gets clinics cancelled, he may not be asked to appear at this event or that event. [Chiacchia] When a family member requests of you to distance yourself from their children-  that's pretty heavy. And uhm....it's... uh...those kind of...again, how do you... how do you ever come away from that? Those are permanent...permanent things that have happened in your life that you'll never quite have the same relationship with those people. [Strub] HIV criminalization is a problem in all sorts of ways. They undercut the most fundamental  message about sexual health which is that each of us must be responsible for protecting ourselves. They contribute enormously to stigma. There is nothing that is a more extreme manifestation of  stigma than when it's enshrined in the law. [Kevin Fenton] The stigma and discrimination relates to HIV and in some cases the fear and the myths related to HIV makes it very difficult sometimes for rational conversations to be had about the risks of transmission and what the evidence actually tells   us about the risks of transmission. [Rhea Van Brocklin] It's that fear of you as a person even though you've not done   anything to them, you've not... affected their life in any other way other than having this disease. [Music playing]. [Donald Baxter] I think that there are a lot of misconceptions about HIV in Iowa- how its transmitted, how infectious people are.   You know, can you just be in the same room with them? "Well, that bike would fit you. This bike is step-through frame." I moved here because I wanted to live in a smaller city that I can be more of a pedestrian and more of a cyclist. Iowa City seemed like a perfect place to be able to do that. [Strub] I'm from Iowa and I love Iowa. We up (?) gay marriage it's a really great place but unfortunately Iowa has one of the most repressive criminalization statutes in the country. I could be subject to 25 years in prison. [Baxter] On a night in January 2007 I was riding my bicycle home from my job. The driver of a mini van pulled up behind me so fast that, I mean, I just...I panicked. And he jerked back into the lane  adjacent to mine...the left lane. Roared past me and then jerked back into the lane. I ride up to his car window, probably not a very smart thing to do, and I rapped on his window. It's cold. I was angry  and I wanted to give the guy piece of my mind. The driver gets out of his car with a  four foot long telescopic windshield scraper and starts slamming the right side of my head  at least four times. I'm bleeding. I still have my bicycle between my legs. I still have my  backpack. And he started yelling at me poling me in the face and at some point his finger  actually went in my mouth. I just bit down. I...thought, "I got to get this person's license number  because I'm calling the police." My first mistake. The Iowa City Police Department decided  to charge me with the assault. [Strub] Everyone agrees that the intent to harm someone should be prosecuted but that is rare. That's not what the bulk of these cases are about. Very few of these cases are about anyone intending to hurt someone else. About a quarter of the cases are for things like spitting or scratching that don't pose any risk of transmission. [Fenton] Issues such as biting or spitting,  which may have been appropriate 30 years ago, really are inappropriate now because we realize that HIV is not readily or easily or transmitted via these routes. [Host] By a vote of 4 to 3, the County  Attorney's decided not to charge Donald under Iowa's HIV criminalization statute... which carries a mandatory 25-year sentence. However, they did prosecute him for "assault causing injury"  and his HIV status was used as evidence in his trial. [Baxter] The judge denied our motion to suppress the issue of HIV because, he said, "that it went to the severity of my response to the situation." [Host] A jury found him guilty of assault but instead of prison the judge sentenced him to community service, a fine and an anger management class. [Baxter] People need to know  that this happened and that...if it can happen to some privileged white guy like me, imagine how people who can't defend themselves deal with this issue? [Music playing]. [Jose De Marco] Gregory Smith was African-    American, he was poor and he had HIV. And just as important Gregory was "out" about being gay. [Music playing]. [Gerald Smith] Gregory was uh...my older brother. So we were close. He was a big brother- always there. [De Marco] And Gregory was somewhat of a flirt. [De Marco laughs]. Uh...that's what I remember most about  Gregory, you know. And he was really cute. [Smith] Gregory was in prison for uhm... a burglary charge for five years... and uh...uhm...pretty much, that's where it all started. [Music playing]. [Smith] When I found out he was HIV positive that's when he had a problem with uhm... one of the correctional officers up at Camden County and uhm... we went to visit him and he told us, "the guard said that he bit him," but when we went to visit him Gregory said, "he didn't bite him." He was on the gurney. He wanted to get treated in the hospital. [De Marco] He was accused of spitting at a guard, biting a guard. Things that you really can't, you know, get infected for HIV for. [Host] Gregory Smith was charged with attempted murder, assault and terroristic threats for allegedly biting and spitting at guards at the Camden County Jail in June of 1989. [Smith] When they, when they came out...HIV that he had HIV and the prison guard was saying that now he might have HIV the hearing and everything it went nuts  and I guess the judge has seen it one way. [Host ]A jury convicted Smith on all the charges and the judge sentenced him to 25 years in jail. [Smith] It was...it was crazy.  The courtroom just...everybody started yelling. I was one of them. Just yelling, "No way. You got to be crazy. Be kidding me." [De Marco] But at that time we all realized   that was a death sentence. It was a death sentence. [Smith] We visited him quite often. It was rough on me.   Wrote home a lot so it was rough on him, the family. Last time we visited him, talking to him... he was all right. You know, he was all right. And then it's when...when they called us and said that he was in a room that he had fell, we went and visited him and it went downhill from there. [Music playing]. [Host] After serving 13 years of his 25 year sentence  Gregory Smith died in prison on November 10th, 2003. [Music playing]. [Kali Lindsey] Traditionally or historically, the largest  proportion of these HIV criminal statutes have been prosecuted among the African- American heterosexual men. That profile is starting to change more recently where we see more gay and bisexual men being prosecuted for these  HIV criminalization exposures. But what's more is that we're finding that these circumstances are really heavily impacting individuals that are already in the incarceration system or the correctional system. [De Marco] As a person of color it's  nothing that I'm...it's nothing new to me. It's not shocking. It's a way of life for us. This is what we know goes on. This is how we've lived, you know, as people of color that I report this is how we've lived our lives. This is our communities. This is what happens when... I'm in and when they go to jail, they get the harshest sentence. [Music playing]. [Catherine Hanssens] Until we resolve homophobia,   until we deal with racism, until we deal with classism...until all of  those things are resolved, I really don't think we're gonna get rid of stigma and   we're gonna deal with the impact that that has on the inclination to prosecute people who are positive. [Music playing]. [Galletly] Very few people have really looked  at the impact of HIV exposure laws on people who have HIV or those   at risk for the virus. So I decided to actually look at the impact  of these laws on people who have HIV. What we found in Michigan, where this first study was conducted, that there was no independent effect  of the law on the disclosure behavior or safer sex behavior of people who have HIV. So those who were aware of the law were not any more likely to disclose that they had HIV to  sexual partners or to practice safer sex than those who weren't aware the law. [Jeffrey Crowley] We just want to suggest that states rely and look at what works from a public health perspective because that's... that's what a legislators job is, that's what a state health department's job is-  is to protect the health of the public and so that should be our paramount concern. [President Barack Obama] "And today we're releasing our National HIV/AIDS Strategy." [Strub] A very important development was the summer with President Obama's National HIV/AIDS Strategy. It included language calling for people  to take a look at these criminalization statutes and how they are contributing to stigma. This is the first time we've had any kind of federal leadership acknowledging that these statutes are a real problem and we need to do something about them and I think that is kind of given permission for a lot of agencies that have not been involved in this work specifically to do so. [Hanssens] Positive Justice Project was launched on September 21st to create a national movement to repeal HIV-specific criminal laws and to end prosecutions and arrests of people with HIV that really are based on their HIV status. [Strub] It's a multi-year campaign and we're just at the beginning stages of it. So we need to mobilize the LGBT community,    the AIDS service organization community, all sorts of people who are involved in public health community, communities of color... to understand the damage these statutes are doing- not just to people with HIV but what they're doing more broadly  in contributing to the spread of the virus. ["In the Life" Music playing]. [Silence]. [Robin Renée playing guitar]. [Renée] I think the biggest myth about  bisexuality is that we don't exist. [Renée singing] "My bride is restless, she waits for a day, and I twist up..." I began to identify as bisexual when I was 12 years old. I had a dream that just sort of told me that...that's who I was and it was very sort of exciting revelation. Uh...when I was nine I actually  came out as a lesbian and I had a journey through that too uh... to recognize that I like boys just as much. [Renée singing] "...boys without compromising, she's full of surprises." ["In the Life" Music playing]. [Host] It is estimated that there are 8.8 million gay, lesbian and bisexual persons in the U.S. Researchers have found that bisexual   women fair the worst in health when compared with heterosexuals, gays and lesbians. They were more likely to be victims of intimate partner violence, had high levels of depression and engaged in binge drinking. The State of Massachusetts has taken the lead in addressing these issues. [Kerith Conron] In the analysis that we did of the Massachusetts State Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey System data we found that bisexual women had poor health profile in multiple domains of health and that was in terms of access to health care, mental health, substance use and chronic health...physical health related outcomes. So, it seems like there is something systemic going on that's different for bisexual women that increases their risk of having   these poor health outcomes. [Music playing]. [Julie Ebin] I do think social stigmas play a part in bisexuals having mental health issues. If people are telling you... "Bisexuals don't exist, you know, you're just waiting to come out all the way" or "Oh, you're just experimenting..."  can be very devaluing and cause a lot of stress,   depression, anxiety. [Robyn Ochs] I think that people who identify as bisexual are under a great deal of social stress due to invisibility, due to the  negative stereotypes about bisexuals. There are people who sexualize your identity and think it's all about sex when that's not what you're saying. There are people who assume that you're a "swinger." So many assumptions made about you, so I think a lot of people are afraid to identify as bisexual because they're...the response is usually not good. [Music playing]. [Renée] I had one very bad experience actually where a gynecologist.... I was actually asking to be tested for STD's which is just a normal routine wanting to make sure everything's good for myself and my partners, and she became very upset when I told  her that I actually had more than one partner identify as polyamorous and...yelled at me and  told me I should you know it's not only about sex and that I should get married and all these things  and it was really distressing because I was being responsible about my sexuality. I wanted to   talk to her and I wasn't able to really do that. [Ebin] When health providers don't understand bisexual issues the danger is that the bisexual client, first of all,   may have a bad experience and not come back...  and not go elsewhere. [Deborah Coady] I definitely ask all my   patients about their sexual identity, orientation, sexual concerns, sexual functioning. When I was in training there was absolutely no   training given or education about sexual diversity. In fact, there's a recent survey of of both doctors and nurses across the country that showed that 30 percent of doctors and nurses in quotes, "feel uncomfortable taking care of patients who are or bisexual or gay." [Amy André] I think one of the best things that we can do to improve bisexual health, is to talk about bisexual health. The book "Bisexual Health," which was published in 2007 by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, was the first book of its kind to come from a national LGBT organization. I found in researching for the book was that a lot of data  was collected on bisexuals but then not reported on. It was just one LGB piece of information and you really had to dig to separate the "B" out of the "L-G-B" and nowadays I see a trend towards  researchers doing that more and more often. [Conron] The State of Massachusetts was responsible in putting a question about sexual orientation on the State Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey. Only a few states right now have included a sexual orientation identity question in their surveys and that will allow us to look at variability across states and will allow us to evaluate the  impact of different social policies on people's health and changes in policies over time. In fact, people are more likely to answer question about their sexual orientation identity than they are to tell you their income. [Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin] "We are simply talking about getting information." "Information vitally needed to protect the health of all Americans. including LGBT Americans." [Host] Recently Representative Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat from Wisconsin, introduced a Health Data Collection Improvement Act- H.R. 6109. A bill that would improve the health care system for LGBT Americans by allowing the Department of Health  and Human Services to collect voluntary data on sexual orientation and gender identity. [Ochs] There is so little research being done by federal and state entities about any kind of LGBT issues. I mean, we...we really are pretty much an ignored population and any research that is being done is usually done about men and HIV. Which is an important field and I don't want to even suggest that shouldn't be done but there's not much attention at all toward women and particularly toward lesbian   and bisexual women. [Coady] Bisexual women can catch every type  of sexually transmitted infection. I think when we try to figure out if they're more prone to certain infections that's difficult because every woman is different and her intimate relationships are different but, you know, risky behavior uhm...and unsafe sex certainly can make bisexual women more prone to certain infections- trichomonas, hepatitis, herpes and chlamydia and gonorrhea are in that group of infections that we see. [André] I think there needs to be a  focus on bisexual women's health. For one thing, for people who are interested in health disparities in relation to sexual orientation it's very important to focus on who's kind of at the bottom of the barrel. Heterosexuals tend to have the best health. Gays and lesbians are in the middle and   bisexuals are down at the bottom. There are a number of studies that show that there are as many people  who identify as bisexual as there are people who identify as gay and lesbians which means that  fifty percent of the LGB population is "B." So the bisexual health crisis, if you will, is actually  very significant. We're talking about half of the LGB population experiencing   significantly poor health. [Ochs] I'd like to see materials about bisexuality in therapists waiting rooms, in campus LGBT offices. A lot of people think that bisexuals aren't there but... we are there but we're not being mentioned.  So people think we're not there and it just feeds into this circle of invisibility. [Coady] Culturally... there's still a real lag in accepting that women can be bisexual and they don't have to be either gay or straight and so that's...that's complex... for a lot of humans, like us, to understand. The spectrums are harder to understand than the boxes. [Music playing]. [Host] Thank you for watching "In the Life." To learn more about the issues in tonight's program or to tell us your thoughts about the show text ITL to 698666 on your mobile phone or visit itlmedia.org. You can also download  and share episodes, watch exclusive webcasts, extended interviews and sign up for "In the Life"  air date alerts. [Renée singing] "My bride is wearing white." "He loves tradition but doesn't much care for the rules." "He stands beside me so confidently as he slips past his childhood fools." "Aimlessly I have seen all  that's good in my..." [Silence]. [Narrator] "In the Life" is funded in part by the H. van Ameringen Foundation... Patricia Kind in honor of her brother Henry van Ameringen... arcus Foundation... The Estate of Richard W. Weiland... GILL Foundation... Wyncote Foundation... Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and by the annual support of "In the Life" members like you. [WNET Thirteen New York station identification music]. [American Public Television station identification music]. [Silence].