When reading the eligibility for donating blood on the American Red Cross website, you will find various requirements such as being healthy, being older than 17 years of age and weighing more than 130 pounds.
What you will not see on the website is the fact that if you are a homosexual or bisexual male, you cannot donate blood.
Why, you ask?
Because in 1969, the “Gay AIDS Epidemic” broke out and the idiotic Food and Drug Administration closed blood donation clinic doors to all MSM— men who have sex with men— because of their increased risk for HIV, hepatitis B and other infections contracted though transfusion.
The even-more-idiotic Russian State Duma MP Mikhail Degtyarev recently proposed the highly criticized anti-LGBT Russian government reintroduce the ban of blood donated by MSM.
In a news conference in Moscow, the hopeful mayoral candidate even referred to the FDA’s ban in an effort to gain support.
Degtyarev referenced the FDA policy to create anti-LGBT legislation.
Yes, you read that correctly.
The American government should realize that it is setting an example for anti-LGBT legislation in foreign countries and at the same time insisting that American LGBT Olympic Athletes be protected from Russia’s anti-LGBT laws.
The FDA needs to remove this ban. It’s undeniably discriminatory and assumes that any homosexual or bisexual man has HIV.
Contrary to what the FDA says, MSM are fully capable citizens who can practice safe sex and avoid contracting HIV through safe practices and regular testing. There is no reason that they should not be able to support fellow Americans in need.
My senior year of high school, I decided that I would forget my fear of needles and attempt to donate blood.
Unfamiliar with the procedure, I grew nervous when I was called from a list so a mechanical mosquito could suck the blood from my arm.
But before any blood draining happened, I had to pass an examination.
“When was the last time you have been out of the country? Which country? For how long?” I was asked.
I was content to know my trip to France did not disqualify me from potentially saving the life of a person in desperate need.
Then I reached my termination of eligiblity.
Being homosexual, I was told that I could not donate my blood.
For the first time, I experienced discrimination from the American government.
It was disheartening to be told that I can’t be a part of a joint effort to save lives because of my uncontrollable affection to the same sex.
It is hard enough living in the South and being LGBT.
Just last July, an East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s deputy arrested a man after he lied and lured him into verbally agreeing to have sex.
He arrested the man under a Louisiana anti-sodomy law that was deemed unconstiutional by the Supreme Court more than a decade ago.
Police officers — people we are taught to trust — targeting homosexual people is not where the buck stops.
LGBT people face enough turmoil on a local level— discrimination on a federal level is completely unnecessary and frankly unnerving.
To help prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS it is important that we all get tested, regardless of our sexualities.
HIV is not a disease that only homosexual people can contract.