Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (March 30, 2005)
Commentary Oregon Daily Emerald Wednesday, March 30, 2005 NEWS STAFF (541)346-5511 IEN SUDICK EDITOR IN CHIEF STEVEN R. NEUMAN Managing editor IARED PABEN AYISHA YAHYA NEWS EDITORS MEGHANN CUNIFF PARKER HOWELL SENIOR NEWS REPORTERS MORIAH BALINGIT AMANDA BOLSINGER ADAM CHERRY EMILY SMITH EVA SYLWESTER SHELDON TRAVER NEWS REPORTERS CLAYTON JONES SPORTS EDITOR ION ROETMAN SENIOR SPORTS REPORTER STEPHEN MILLER BRIAN SMITH SPORTS REPORTERS RYAN NYBURG PULSE EDITOR AMY LICHTY SENIOR PULSE REPORTER IOSHUA LINTEREUR PULSE REPORTER CAT BALDWIN PULSE CARTOONIST AILEE SLATER COMMENTARY EDITOR GABE BRADLEY ANNEMARIE KNEPPER CHUCK SLOTHOWER JENNIFER MCBRIDE COLUMNISTS ASHLEY GRIFFIN SUPPLEMENT FREELANCE EDITOR DANIELLE HICKEY PHOTO EDITOR IAUREN WIMER SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER NICOLE BARKER TIM BOBOSKY PHOTOGRAPHER ERIK BISHOFF KAIE HORTON PART-TIME PHOTOGRAPHERS BRET FURIWANGLER GRAPHIC ARTIST DUSTIN REESE SENIOR DESIGNER ELLIOTT ASBURY WENDY KIEFFER AMANDA LEE JONAH SCHROGIN DESIGNERS SHADRA BEESLEY IEANNIE EVERS COPY CHIEFS KIMBERLY BLACKF1F.LD PAUL THOMPSON SPORTS COPY EDITORS GREG BILSLAND AMBER LINDROS NEWS COPY EDITORS ADRIENNE NELSON ONLINE EDITOR WEBMASTER (541)346-5511 JUDY RIEDL GENERAL MANAGER KATHY CARBONE BUSINESS MANAGER 1AUNA DF. GIUSTI RECEPTIONIST IERED NAGEL PATRICK SCHMERBER HOLLY STEIN PETER STEPHENS I ANA SWANSON ROB WEGNER CAROLYN ZIMMERMAN DISTRIBUTION ADVERTISING (541)346-3712 MELISSA GUST ADVERTISING DIRECTOR TYLER MACK SALES MANAGER MATT BETZ HERON CALISCH-DOLEN MEGAN HAMLIN KATE HIRONAKA MAEGAN KASER-LEE KELLEE KAUFTHE1L MIA LE1DELMEYER SHANNON ROGERS SALES REPRESENTATIVES CLASSIFIED (541)3464343 TR1NA SHANAMAN CLASSIFIED MANAGER KORALYNN BASHAM ANDO KATY GAGNON KER1 SPANGLER KATIE STRINGER CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING ASSOCIATES PRODUCTION (541)3464381 MICHELE ROSS PRODUCTION MANAGER TARA SLOAN PRODUCTION COORDINATOR JEN CRAMLET KRISTEN DICHARRY CAMERON GAUT SABRINA GOWETTE IONAH SCHROGIN DESIGNERS The Oregon Daily Emerald is pu6 lished daily Monday through Fri day during the school year by the Oregon Daily Emerald Publishing Co. Inc., at the University of Ore gon, Eugene, Ore. The Emerald operates independently of the University with offices in Suite 300 of the Erb Memorial Union. The Emerald is private property. Unlawful removal or use of papers is prosecutable by law. Bret Furtwangler | Graphic artist ■ In my opinion All hearts are created equal When the hearts that beat inside us are weighed and valued, treated like any other consumer good, do our char acteristics make them less priceless? If I were a supermodel or a rocket scien tist, wouldn’t it still be the same red pump filling me with oxygen regard less of my social status or race or any other skin-deep difference? Some hearts, however, are appar ently worth more than others. Politi cal administrations, scared by their own flickering shadows, let in nocents die because of twisted, stereotypical assumptions. One of the most harmful U.S. poli cies toward homosexuals is the U.S. Federal Drug Administration’s ban on homosexuals donating blood and or gans. There is a shortage of blood, es pecially of rare types and universal donors. Anyone who doubts there is a need should glance at the mile-long lists of people who will lose their friends and families to genetic flaws. These flaws could be fixed if we opened the doors to all people willing to give parts of themselves in compassion and mercy. What does it matter if the person who gives that gift is homosexual? There is the obvious and cliche re sponse of AIDS protection. The blood ban was placed in the United States around 1977, when HIV was spread ing through the homosexual (as well as heterosexual) community like wildfire and there was a notable danger of contamination. Today that threat has lessened, and the bans on homosexual blood donors are already ridiculous in nature. One homosexual act, no matter what kind (and the blood donor form is quite vague), disqualifies someone from be ing a donor. It doesn’t matter if you dabbled, if you did it thirty years ago, if you were monogamous, if you were JENNIFER MCBRIDE QUASHING DISSENT safe. The mere fact that you are who you are makes you different. Furthermore, non-homosexuals, of ten less safe as blood donors, are not placed under the same brutal micro scope. Prostitutes, promiscuous hetero sexuals and intravenous drug users are only deferred from donating, not banned, despite the fact that their lifestyle choices may be more threaten ing to public peace and lives. The ironic twist is that the myth that homosexuals are the main carriers of AIDS has persisted in the face of truth. Only about 8 percent of the U.S. male gay population is HIV positive. The Centers for Disease Control and Pre vention reports that the infection rate for heterosexual females has increased by the highest degree, making hetero sexual females the largest threat group. Even if there are more gay people with AIDS than straight people with AIDS, a disputed fact on its own, the Red Cross and other organizations sift blood through at least three different sensitive screening tests. An HIV-in fected specimen will slip through only once in 1.2 million times. The Red Cross doesn’t ask about homo sexual behavior in other nations. Bel gium and parts of Spain take all or gans and blood donated, yet their rates of AIDS infection have not sky rocketed. The Dutch and the Swiss are also reconsidering their policies of banning homosexual donations. The Hemophilia Foundation opposes the ban, saying that if people who had homosexual sex are allowed to give blood after a five-year defer ment, an estimated 62,300 donors would be added to the list of eligible candidates. Lifting the policy, in their words, is “crucial to the donor pool. ” If each blood donation could save three people, as we are told when we line up for the shot and the cookies, then another estimated 186,900 lives could be saved if the policy against homosexual donors were altered. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that those lives saved outweigh the one-in-a-million chance of getting fatally sick. My father’s recent health problems have made this prohibition even more ludicrous in my eyes. If a short-sighted, discriminatory and dehumanizing poli cy is the only thing that separates his life from his death, I would spend the rest of my life in pain, wondering “what if?” What if there had been a donor out there with a good heart who was denied the chance to give blood because his personal life made the Rea gan administration and every adminis tration since a little uncomfortable? The question is: Is it ethical to lie about your sexuality on the donor forms if you know you don’t have AIDS, circumventing the tools of the tormentors to give a life-saving gift anyway? The point is, no one should have to. No one should be forced into a closet just to be kind. If nothing else, the ban perpetuates the myth that homosexuals are some how sick and should be kept separated — an apartheid of organs. Maybe it’s time to stop thinking with our Bibles and start thinking with our hearts. Let all hearts be created equal, and let them beat strongly. )ennifermcbride@dailyememld.com OREGON DAILY EMERALD LETTERS POLICY Letters to the editor and guest commentaries are encouraged, and should be sent to letters@dailyemerald.com or submitted at the Oregon Daily Emerald office EMU Suite 300 Electronic submissions are preferred^ Letters are limited to 250 words, and guest commentaries to 550 words Authors are limited to one submission per calendar month Submissions should include phone number and address for venhcation. The Emerald reserves the right to edit for space, grammar and style. Guest submissions are published at the discretion of the Emerald ■ Editorial Denial of free access to records inexcusable Sharing. It’s one of the first things we’re taught to do, and it provides a framework from which many people choose to lead their lives. House the poor. Feed the hungry. For journalists, it’s a word that also means the promotion of access to public information. In a nation where our First Amendment touts freedom of speech, and democracy is the cornerstone of government, it is a won der why access to government information has become such a “dirty” endeavor. It is of ten scary and difficult to look beyond what the Department of Homeland Security tells us to think about national security. Words such as risk, danger and protection are splashed into the reasoning for dismissed Freedom of Information Act requests. To a certain extent — for public safety — this is understandable. But there is no excuse for the mockery the Bush administration has made of records disclosure, a sad situation that culminated this past week in yet another failed attempt by a news agency to obtain copies of Presi dent Bush’s military records. A March 20 As sociated Press article reported that the fed eral government refused to release the records, deemed public information by the courts, because officials were unwilling to search boxes filled with rat excrement. Texas National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. John Stanford was quoted as saying it was tough to search through the boxes because they were full of dirt, bugs and the aforementioned droDDines. We just can’t resist: What a load of crap. This came after months of litigation with The Associated Press, which filed numerous lawsuits during the 2004 presidential elec tion to gain access to records that might shed light on the scope of the president’s 1972 service in the Texas National Guard. After government officials swore under oath that they had released all documents perti nent to Bush’s service, 31 pages popped up, apparently covered in so much dirt and ex crement that they couldn’t find them during the first search ... or rather, the documents were “discovered” after pressure from an AP and Guard agreement to look again. This is just one of many disappointing ex amples of state and federal agencies spend ing more time protecting secrecy than pro moting access, a sentiment recently highlighted by AP attorney David A. Schultz. The government has used national security and outrageous search and copy fees (such as hundreds of thousands of dol lars just to agree to search for documents) to undermine the power of the Freedom of Information Act. However, FOIA requests reached 4 million this past year — an all-time high — and we couldn’t be more pleased. This validates the incredible necessity of the act and the desire of citizens to understand the inner-workings of the federal government; or, more appro priately, the actions and spending of the offi cials they have elected to serve them. EDITORIAL BOARD Jennifer Sudick Steven R. Neuman Editor in Chief Managing Editor David Jagernauth Shadra Beesley Commentary Editor Copy Chief Adrienne Nelson Online Editor
