Every year, or twice a year, the local YMCA has a blood drive. For awhile, one of the staff--who knew I was gay--would ask in a chirping voice, "Are you going to give blood?" "No," I said in a frustrated voice.
The reason I cannot give blood is not because I've been overseas recently, or because of any medical malady within me, but simply because of one thing, and one thing only: because I am a gay man...a practicing gay man.
Even though I have a rarer blood type, and the blood banks used to come to me often during the year, I cannot give blood anymore because of the answers I would give to the nurse or technician to certain questions.
It feels and looks and smells like discrimination.
There is a man in Australia who is fighting it. Click here for more. Perhaps more of us should fight it in the States.
Pace, Brett
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