The LGBT group behind the lawsuit argues that the virus is no longer the threat it was in the 1990s
An LGBT advocacy group has sued the US Department of Defense and the US Army over a policy barring HIV-positive individuals from enlisting in the military. The group argued that modern medicine has made the 1991 ban “irrelevant.”
The lawsuit was filed on Thursday by Lambda Legal on behalf of a gay man, a transgender woman, and a straight woman, all of whom cannot join the armed forces due to their HIV diagnoses. The Pentagon enacted a blanket ban on HIV-positive recruits in 1991, at a time when roughly twice as many Americans were dying of AIDS as today, per figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Medical breakthroughs, particularly the advent of antiretroviral drugs, have “radically changed the landscape of HIV treatment and progression,” the lawsuit read. With those in treatment incapable of transmitting HIV and the…
