Why I Do Not Like Dealing With Red Cross

Red Cross is a homophobic organization, at least where their blood drives are concerned. The local chapter of Red Cross has their quarterly blood drives here in our town, and I have always relied on their advertising that "All are welcome and encouraged to give blood". That message should be corrected to say "All heterosexuals are welcome and encouraged to give blood, but gays can stay away."

I went to a blood drive not long ago here in our town, Independence, KS which is coordinated by their larger office in Wichita, KS. They asked me if I had ever had any homosexual experiences since 1977 -- about thirty years ago. Of course I had to answer 'yes'. So, they said then you cannot give blood. Now, if you stop and think about it, any gay person, even a teenager who had a single gay experience out of curiosity is eliminated. Generally a person would be an older teen if they did anything 'gay' so that person would be minimum of 45-50 years old today. Persons who are likely to be open enough to admit to gay activity would be in the 20-50 year old range today. Ergo, no blood accepted from any person who is gay and open enough and honest enough to mention it, which would be many/most younger gay guys today.

Now, they stated "this is because of HIV/AIDS" and while that may be true, it is only a red herring. A huge, vast number of gay guys were not even yet born when AIDS first became a crisis. Some of us were born by then and by the early 1980's almost too old to be having sex on a regular basis.

I know quite a lot about AIDS/HIV and that although you can 'catch AIDS' from a single unprotected experience, depending on the context and circumstances it is not always very likely. Note I said _SINGLE_ experience, in a _VERY SMALL TOWN_ and the type of experience you chose to get involved in.

Now that is not true for me, I've had zillions of sexual escapades in my life, but but almost none in the past 10-15 years, or that is to say fewer and fewer as the years go on. I do not have AIDS/HIV for which I thank God, it could be me as easily as many of the guys it has happened to. But you see, by the time AIDS got generally well known (early 1980's) I was already too old to have sex on any sort of regular basis, particularly with a younger person who was statistically more likely (by virtue of their bed-hopping antics) to have gotten infected.

And while in the early days of HIV/AIDS (1980's) there was no method known to detect it in the blood, thus could not be tested for, and some blood banks such as a few in California left themselves open and liable for passing along diseased blood (see the book Boys in the Band by Randy Shilts for example) that is NOT the case today. Today, all blood is tested, AIDS/HIV can be ferreted out and is. Red Cross especially tests all blood given to them. So why the special concern over blood from gay guys today? And why single out gay guys rather than sexually promiscuous people in general, whether they be gay or straight?

A whore can 'catch AIDS' from her several tricks ... her heterosexual customers can 'catch AIDS'. So why single out gay men over such a long period of time (I mean, thirty years with _any_ homosexual experience at all is rather extreme. That is unless Red Cross is stating the damnable lie that 'all gay men are promiscuous' and those who have not died from AIDS/HIV very soon will die, etc.

If Red Cross wished to use caution and flag blood from a gay person to particularly look for symptoms of HIV that is understandable, but to flat out deny a gay person the right to give blood simply on the fact that the person was honest enough to say they had been in an occassional gay event sometime in the past thirty years is nothing more than homophobia. Particularly when taken in the context of the person's age and the community in which they live, etc.

And then to attempt to dissuade that person from making a complaint against their homophobia by none the less offering the gay person some free refreshments or whatever promotional trinkets they happen to be giving away to the persons from whom they did accept blood (nice, heterosexual people) adds an insult to it.

I do not not expect Red Cross to be physicians and diagnose the presence of AIDS/HIV but I do expect a modicum of common sense from their workers and not a deliberatly hurtful response to persons who are GLBT. Do they also disqualify black people on the premise that their blood 'may possibly' have that disease which only afflicts black people or do they refuse to accept blood from Jews on account of that disease which only afflicts Jewish men? Then why do that with gay men? Mainly I guess because Red Cross is a homophobic organization. Not only do I not give them my blood (which they claim they do not want anyway) but I have pretty much stopped giving them anything.

I said to the lady at the blood drive here, "Well, I guess people could always lie about it," and her response was "People should not lie" and that is true, they should not and I would suppose there is no young guy white or black who has never lied about a homosexual experience from year's past.

So as long as you lie about your sexual proclivities (be they being gay) you are welcome to give blood to Red Cross, but if you are honest enought to tell them where things are at, they will humiliate you (or at least try to, although I am not humiliated very easily) and discriminate against you.

PAT