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I read this arti­cle on CNN the other day: Love in the time of HIV/AIDS . It’s about how HIV/AIDS patients are liv­ing longer lives and are increas­ingly able to do nor­mal stuff like get mar­ried (even to HIV neg­a­tive part­ners) and have bio­log­i­cal kids (who are very often HIV negative).

All this is great news! But I won­der whether the arti­cle itself dis­plays some stigma towards HIV/AIDS suf­fer­ers. Why would I think such a thing? Because, of all the cou­ples they could have picked to fea­ture in the arti­cle, they chose one in which the HIV-positive part­ner “con­tracted HIV through con­t­a­m­i­nated blood prod­ucts when he was a child.” As such, he is sex­u­ally inno­cent, hav­ing played no part in his con­tract­ing HIV. We should be glad that he is able to get mar­ried, because he didn’t do any­thing wrong.

The real­ity of the mat­ter is that nowa­days few peo­ple con­tract HIV through con­t­a­m­i­nated blood prod­ucts and most con­tract it instead through choices involv­ing sex and drugs. Many indi­vid­u­als play russ­ian roulette in this regard, and some lose. CNN passed up a valu­able oppor­tu­nity to por­tray the real­ity of the mat­ter: that most HIV/AIDS patients are not vic­tims of cir­cum­stances but of their own choices. How­ever, that does not make them ter­ri­ble peo­ple or unde­serv­ing of valu­able rela­tion­ships, it’s just the way the dis­ease works. With the lov­ing under­stand­ing of their part­ners, peo­ple who have made all kinds of mis­takes in the past, even includ­ing those result­ing in HIV/AIDS, can par­tic­i­pate in suc­cess­ful marriages.

With the help of friends, fam­ily, and med­i­cine, HIV/AIDS patients are now more able than ever take con­trol of their futures and enjoy lives well worth liv­ing. This is some­thing to be cel­e­brated, regard­less of whether the patient in ques­tion was a drug user or did not con­form to rarely prac­ticed ideals of sex­u­al­ity. Let (s)he who is with­out sin cast the first stone.