Why would you do that? If you knowingly and intentionally hurt someone like that, you deserve a strict punishment.

These people intentionally are giving others a deadly disease! Yet misgendering someone is considered a bigger crime (People are punished up to a year vs HIV no longer being a felony and being punished for 6 months).

link

The rationale isn't to be more lenient to offenders, but to treat it more as a public health issue and actually reduce HIV transmissions.

Previously, as a felony, an "intent" element needed to be proven in order to establish the charge. This discouraged people from even getting tested for HIV so that the element of intent was not present and they wouldn't risk a felony charge.

The new law has apparently been coupled with a push for greater ease of testing so that people are not only encouraged to get tested, but have easier access to it too.

What's should ultimately be the aim of such legislation? Reducing HIV transmission... punishment should only be a means to that end (the justice system shouldn't be about exacting revenge). And I think the new measures can do a better job at reducing HIV transmission than the previous punitive measures did, if it means that more people get tested for it.

^^^I'm not sure that article is accurate. In any case, it greatly exaggerates and misrepresents the legislation.

I glanced through the legislation and can't see where it makes imprisonment an option? I only see civil penalties (fines, reprimands) against the nursing care facility and staff.

Of course, even maximum civil penalties wouldn't be applied to misgendering a person. The article fails to mention that the penalties apply to a much greater array of conduct than just that, and the others are more serious:
- Denying admission to a resident merely on the basis of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or HIV status
- Evicting a resident merely on the basis of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or HIV status
- Prohibiting or harassing a resident when they use the bathroom of their gender identity
- Denying or restrict medical or nonmedical care that is appropriate to a resident’s organs and bodily needs, or provide medical or nonmedical care in a manner that unduly demeans the resident’s dignity or causes avoidable discomfort (this doesn't apply if its within professionally reasonable clinical judgment, though)

Even getting a reprimand for misgendering is limited to circumstances where staff "wilfully and repeatedly" to do after being clearly informed. A facility wouldn't get the full penalty for that anyway - that'd be reserved for more serious misconduct like denying medical care.

So why do these measures go further than in other businesses?

"The focus on nursing homes, one suspects, was chosen not because there is an epidemic of elderly transgender people being misgendered by their caretakers, but simply because the elderly make for a particularly sympathetic test case."
Lol no. Wrong one both counts. It's because elderly or disabled people in long-term care are clearly among the most vulnerable populations there are. In many cases they are completely at the whim of their caretakers. There is incredible scope for abuse and mistreatment at these facilities, and often the residents cannot stand up for themselves at all. Many have dementia, alzheimers and other neurodegenerative disease. So there's a high standard of care imposed on facilities and staff, and there needs to be.

As for an epidemic of elderly LGBT residents being mistreated: well yes, there actually is. A report published by the National Senior Citizens Law Center found: 43% of respondents reported personally witnessing or experiencing instances of mistreatment of LGBT residents in long-term care facilities, 89% believed that staff would discriminate against an LGBT resident, and 53% believed that staff discrimination would rise to the level of abuse or neglect.

Beware the "news" articles with clear agendas.