EXCLUSIVE: R. Kelly Tells Judge It’s Not Illegal To Spread Herpes

(AllHipHop News) R. Kelly’s has fired back at a New York STD law as he fights to get a disturbing charge dismissed in his child sex abuse/racketeering case.

Earlier this month, the “I Believe I Can Fly” hitmaker was accused of deliberately infecting his victims with Herpes, although he has denied having the incurable STD.

The Feds say R. Kelly gave Herpes to at least two women.

One was an underaged Jane Doe, while the second woman allegedly contracted the STD from R. Kelly in 2017.

R. Kelly’s lawyer Steven Greenberg just filed documents challenging a New York law that has been on the books since 1943.

Section 2307 of the New York Public Health Law makes it illegal for someone who knows they have an “infectious venereal disease” to have sex with another person without telling them.

But Greenberg believes the law prevents people in New York from having sex altogether and therefore must be unconstitutional.

“The law does not punish the transmission of herpes, nor does it punish the failure to disclose to another that one has an STD,” Steve Greenberg argued. “Instead, it prohibits anyone who has an STD from having sexual intercourse. It is this wholesale prohibition that the government does not even attempt to address – nor can it…”

Greenberg claimed the statute being used to target R. Kelly is “puritanical” and was enacted during a time when interracial sex was illegal, and same-sex marriages weren’t even considered.

Greenberg called the law “wholesale prohibition” on sex and under the current law, tens-of-millions of people with Herpes and other STDs would be banned from being intimate with their partners.

“The statute at issue calls for a complete and total prohibition on sexual intercourse, regardless of whether one is married or not, regardless of whether consent has been contained, and regardless of whether proactive measures have been taken to ensure a lack of transmission,” Greenberg continued. “The State of New York certainly has a rational reason to want to control the spread of STDs. However, the State cannot do so by completely banning sex – which is exactly what the statute achieves.”

R. Kelly is facing multiple charges, including sexual exploitation of minors, racketeering and moving females over state lines to have sex.

R. Kelly should be going to trial in July for the charges in Brooklyn, although the date could be affected by the court closings caused by the coronavirus currently consuming New York.

And R. Kelly still faces criminal charges in Chicago and Minneapolis too.