Starting on Wednesday, the Florida Supreme Court will hear opening arguments in a case over the definition of sexual intercourse that involves a gay man charged with breaking the law for failing to let his partner know he is HIV-positive.

In 2011, Gary Debaun of Key West was charged with falsely telling a man he did not have the virus before they engaged in sexual acts, The Associated Press reports. According to a 1986 law, HIV-positive people are required to tell their partners of their status before having sex. However, the defendant says that the law only applies to heterosexual couples since it defines "sexual intercourse" as between a man and a woman.

Monroe County Circuit Judge Wayne Miller dismissed the charge against Debaun, agreeing that the state law defined "sexual intercourse" in a traditional sense.

However, the state filed an appeal, arguing the law was clearly intended to include other, both homosexual and heterosexual sexual, activity in order to prevent the spread of HIV.

The district appeals court agreed with the state, and overturned the lower-court decision and asked the Supreme Court to weigh in.

"The Florida Legislature and this court have always identified penile-vaginal union as 'sexual intercourse' and distinguished it from all other sexual contact," Debaun's lawyer, assistant public defender Brian Lee Ellison, in his brief to the high court, said according to Reuters. "The plain meaning of the term is therefore clear and unambiguous."

Debaun's lawyer added that in Florida sexual intercourse "does not refer to homosexual acts or oral sex."

Assistant Attorney General Joanne Diez wrote in her brief that "the lack of a definition of 'sexual intercourse' ... did not render the statute ambiguous or unclear." Rather, the law sought to protect citizens "from a public health threat."

The Florida Supreme Court is expected to take months to issue a ruling in this case.