Now, first off let me explain why this is a blog entry instead of a letter.
This happened about a month or two ago and, I'm embarassed to admit, I
didn't do anything at the time it happened because I was in a hurry. Still,
this is something that has been on my mind for awhile, so I'd thought I'd
write about it here.

About a month ago I was in Wal-Mart, and I was in quite a hurry. I was
taking my mom to the hospital. In fact, I hadn't wanted to stop at Wal-Mart
at all, but she insisted I stop in to pick up a prescription and grab her a
snack as she hadn't been able to eat anything that day. (I think she was
procrastinating going to the hospital actually, but I digress.) I quickly
picked up the medicine and grabbed her something to snack up. Items in
hand, I went to the nearest express line.

The woman in front of me had probably 30 items in the 20 items or less
line, which is annoying. It's also a cashier's nightmare. I worked at this
particular Wal-Mart in the past and I know from experience that you are not
allowed to tell anyone they have too many items to go through the express
line, but the CSMs will also complain if you let such people go through
your line. You just can't win! Anyway, I was trying to being patient as
this woman checked out when she looked up at the cashier and said, "I'm
sorry if I have too much stuff for this lane."

The cashier's response floored. She smiled and said, "It's not a problem.
You don't have that much stuff. The ones that really get me are the
Mexicans. They are always come through with like a cartload of stuff."

My mouth dropped open, and I looked around to see if anyone else had heard
as she had spoken quite loudly, but no one else seemed to have noticed. It
was my turn to go through the line, and I'm sad to say I didn't say
anything to her. I was still in shock, but I really should have spoken up.
Still surprised, I went back out to the car and told my mom was she had
said.

Like I said, I worked at this Wal-Mart before and I've had problem with
people with too many items in the express lanes. The worst I ever had was
near Christmas when a white couple brought in two heaping cartloads through
my express lane saying they "...were in a hurry." I've seen people of
muliple races and ethnicities (spelling?) do this, and there's no way you
can say one is worse than another really.

Hindsight is twenty twenty, but I really wish I had done something about it
then.

Recently, I decided to actively advertise for a donor kidney. A friend of
mine, and a truly sweet person, offered to donate if he was able to do so.
He made arrangements to learn his blood type to see if he could donate.

The next day, he posted on facebook that he would not be able to donate,
but it wasn’t because of his blood type or any health issue. It was because
he is homosexual. To my complete surprise, if a man ever has sex with
another man he is forever banned from donating blood and organs.

I was shocked to learn that this was a law, and in all reality it just
doesn’t really make sense. The fear is because of HIV/AIDS, but all blood
is tested. In fact, when I did some research I found that gay men aren’t
the only high risk group. According to one site:

“AIDS is one of the top three causes of death for African American men aged
25–54 and for African American women aged 35–44 years in the United States
of America. In the United States, African Americans make up about 47% of
the total HIV-positive population and more than half of new HIV cases,
despite making up only 12% of the population. African American women are 19
times more likely to have HIV than white women.”

Could you imagine if someone attempted to pass laws saying that African
Americans couldn’t donate blood or organs? There would be an outcry, and I
would agree with that outcry. People would need to be outraged, so why
aren’t they now?

Oddly enough, when I tried to see how homosexual men compared to the
previous statistics, it was difficult. While most HIV/AIDS patients are
grouped according to race, gay men are grouped completely separately and
there’s actually a little overlap. For example, if an African American was
also a homosexual he would be listed in both groups which makes a clear
comparison difficult if not impossible.

To me, it seems that this law is left over from the time when AIDS was
considered a ‘gay disease.’ When I looking up information, I surprised that
in the medical community the disease was initially referred to as a gay
cancer and was named at one point GRID (gay related immune deficiancy). I
remember back when HIV and AIDS was really in the news everyday. There were
people out there that were actually saying that it was God’s way of
punishing homosexuals, which was ridiculous. What’s so odd is that you
would think we would have moved past this by now. Why are we still clinging
to homophobic inaccuracies? I think my nephrologist put it best. After
telling him about this law he said, “For such a progressive country, there
are still some archaic views.”

When this was discussed on facebook, there were people who defended this
law. I have to be perfectly honest here, I do have vested interest because
of my situation, but I have to wonder if those people who defended it would
feel the same if they or a loved one was in my situation. Shouldn’t I be
able to decide for myself? After all, there is a risk with any organ
donation, but I’m certainly not going to be able to make it forever without
one.

In the end, I’m not sure what can be done but it seems doesn’t appear to be
known by a lot of people. I’ve asked doctors and nurses, and they were
usually as surprised as I was about it. I want to spread the word.
Hopefully, awareness will be the first step in correcting this injustice.