NCJ Number
107914
Journal
Hofstra Law Review Volume: 14 Issue: 1 Dated: (Fall 1985) Pages: 137-162
Date Published
1985
Length
26 pages
Annotation
Analysis of the constitutional issues related to efforts to deal with the threat of AIDS shows the limits of the protections offered by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Abstract
Historic prejudices have provided support for religious and legal sanctions against homosexual behavior. The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently refused to extend constitutional protection of the right of sexual privacy to homosexuals, while upholding State prohibitions on acts of private consensual homosexual relations. Currently, the major health problem that AIDS poses threatens to undermine efforts to protect the civil rights of gays, particularly in view of the uncertain etiology of the disease. Opponents of homosexual rights have used the AIDS issue as a way to intensify preexisting prejudice against gay men. Many people support repressive measures to confine AIDS carriers. However, it is not yet clear which of these responses are unconstitutional. The issues involved in handling inmates who are AIDS carriers or AIDS victims illustrate the dilemma. Inmate requests and correctional managers' decisions regarding AIDS testing, job assignments for AIDS carriers or victims, isolation, and transfers all involve constitutional issues relating to cruel and unusual punishment and due process rights. However, constitutional law has only limited control of State responses to AIDS. The main protections to AIDS victims and carriers will come from medicine and science, rather than from law, and from citizen tolerance, rather than judicial leadership. 168 footnotes.