Just, whoa.

If you bother to examine my blogroll closely, you might notice that the entry for The Unapologetic Atheist is gone. There are several reasons for that. One of the reasons is because, well, he deleted his blog.

Another important reason is because he has been charged with two counts of knowingly exposing another to HIV.

It would be an understatement to say that I'm stunned. And furious. It's probably important to note that in our legal system, people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. But it's also true that I never expected anyone on my blogroll to even be accused of anything like this. And I can't help but notice that his blog has been deleted, which doesn't make him look particularly innocent. His Yahoo profile is gone, too.

So perhaps Rob Richardson is innocent, and perhaps he isn't. Either way, I can't help but notice that at least one anonymous commenter associates my site with his. It therefore seems appropriate that I should address the situation.

It should go without saying that knowingly and intentionally exposing someone to HIV isn't ever, ever okay. I'm not saying that HIV+ people should never have sex. I'm saying that they have a moral obligation to inform their partners of the additional risk that HIV presents. A woman who doesn't know that her partner is HIV+ certainly wasn't consenting to what she thought she was. If her partner didn't know, it's a tragedy. But if he did, it's sexual assault.

Frankly, despite my desires to remain neutral about Richardson's particular case, I must admit that it's hard given the facts of the case. His HIV+ status is apparently not contested, or his accusers would have no case. Likewise, there would be no case if he could prove that he received the diagnosis after the sexual encounters, so I have to think that he must've known. And I find it extremely unlikely that two different women would both report the a nearly identical story. Take all that together with what many of the comments on the Lawrence Journal-World article that imply some very dodgy behavior on Richardson's part, and... Well, like I said, it's hard to remain neutral.

If the facts are what they appear to be, Richardson deserves strong condemnation. The damage that would be done to his causes -- to my causes -- is considerable. His actions, if the allegations are true, confirm all the worst stereotypes about atheists. He gives feminists a bad name. He gives liberals a bad name. Most of all, he provides fodder for the lie that atheists are incapable of being moral.

The worst part is that Richardson should have known better. About a year ago, he blogrolled Shades Of Grey. In a fit of morbid curiosity, I discovered that you can still see that post courtesy Google's cache, at the very bottom of the page. One post above that, he wrote this:

It really gets my goat when people who are notorious for their hard-line, unflinching hatred of those who are different (uh, I meant, those going against God's will) are coming off looking like the paragons of virtue, and the people who are supposed to be the progressives are lashing out like toddlers who didn't get their candy.

We're better than this. We're better than people like Coulter, Kristol, and Buchanan. Now start freaking acting like it, goddamnit!

...

What this boils down to is: stop getting mad and lashing out blindly. Start fighting rationally and thoughtfully.

Yes! I agree! It is sad when someone who should know better makes the far right seem like paragons of virtue. So it seems absurd that I should ever have to say something like "Don't knowingly expose others to HIV."

UPDATE: I fixed the link to the Lawrence Journal-World article. Also, I have an update regarding the status of the allegations. You can read it here.