Commentary
Oregon Daily Emerald
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
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■ 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
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■ 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