AIDS and sex: Is warning a moral obligation?

Common-sense holds that morality requires people who know that they are infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) to disclose this fact to their sexual partners. But many gay men who are HIV-positive do not disclose, and AIDS Service Organizations (ASOs) promote public-health policies based on safer sex by all, rather than disclosure by those who know that they are infected. The paper shows that the common-sense view follows from a minimal sexual morality based on consent. ASOs' seeming rejection of the view follows from their need to take seriously widespread weakness of will in the realm of sexuality. The author argues that gay men take themselves to follow the common sense view, but hold that the possibility of a partner's HIV infection is background information that need not be disclosed for sexual consent. This suggestion is criticized. The paper concludes with a consideration of HIV disclosure and sexual ethics outside of the gay community and of legal restrictions on the sexuality of the HIV-positive.