Asterisk

Many people don’t realize that federal law forbids gay men from donating blood, tissue, or organs. The regulation began as a guideline in 1983 in the middle of the AIDS panic and was codified in 1990.

While I believe it was necessary at its inception, the ban has long since been outmoded by the testing required of all donations. Current blood testing detects HIV between 10 and 21 days after exposure. Many organizations have been trying to get this unnecessary restriction overturned for quite some time. Since 2006 their numbers include the Red Cross, the AABB (the international blood association), and America’s Blood Centers.

Yet in the face of all scientific research to the contrary, the FDA and CDC, which regulate the nation’s blood supply and tissue/organ donations, say that a lifetime ban on gay men who have had sex once in the last 25 years is appropriate. (By the way, a woman who had unprotected anal sex last night? Step right up! Two gay men who have only had sex with each other for the past fifty years? Their blood’s no good.)

The rule is iron-clad for blood and tissue, but there is one exception for organ donation. Jim Swift of KXAN, the Fox affiliate in Austin, Texas, filed this report yesterday:

[edit 5/13/12: Video embed is dead. Here's a link to the story.]

A rare kidney disorder showed up in testing for the donor, so the donation fell through. A school principal was next up. Health issues got in the way again. Vara kept smiling and praying.

Then a co-worker at the Texas State Comptroller’s office, hearing about Vara’s ups and downs, pulled him aside one day. He offered to give up one of his kidneys.

“It matters to me; it matters that those kids have a father,” Knisely explained.

First, he had something to tell Vara: “I’m gay,” he confided.

Recalling the conversation, Vara’s eyes sparkle and a small knowing smile spreads across his face.

“I said, ‘Philip, I know.’”

Tests revealed no HIV/AIDS infection, which the CDC specifically looks for when homosexuals are tested for transplants. In fact, Knisely, at the age of 51, is the picture of health.

And to Knisely, Vara is the picture of tolerance.

“There are a number of men who I’ve worked with the whole 19 years that we’ve known each other who still don’t speak to me today,” Knisely said.

As for Vara, there was never any doubt.

“I treat everybody the same,” said Vara.

Thank you Philip Knisely, for risking a friendship to save a life.

This morning I found out that there will be a protest/blood drive about the FDA gay ban in Phoenix, Arizona TOMORROW, February 21, 2009. 100 healthy HIV-, Hepatitis B- and Hepatitis C- men will ask to give blood and save up to three lives each; based on the current policy they will be denied the ability to donate. A second blood drive will take place in cities across the nation on May 23, 2009.

A few weeks ago, Jason Dabrowski’s Just A Jason Blog ran an article on an offensive free application made for Android, the free open source mobile project headed up by Google. Android is currently available in the US on one T-Mobile phone, but increased availability is in the works. Basically, it’s Google’s response to the iPhone, and yes I’m dumbing it way down.

Google has opened up an application marketplace where anybody can create an app for others to download, much (to my understanding) like the iPod/iPhone app marketplace. Straight? is an app from a company called Bendroid, and it works thusly: The user places his (apparently there’s no hers version) finger on the touch screen. There are two potential results, both of which are troublesome. (Thanks to Jason Dabrowski for the images.)

Positive result

Remember how Bishop Gene Robinson pointed out (part 3) that patriarchy and misogyny are the root of homophobia? That’s what we’re seeing here. Aside of what’s coming next, this positive result assumes that male –and not just male, but the hyper-masculine brand of male– is the optimum setting. (And as Jason observes, the empty rainbow is white. Not sure that was intentional, but it’s certainly interesting.)

Negative result

Here we have the negative result. The combination of the rainbow, the (misspelled) word “sweetie” and the lavender bit at the end point directly toward homosexuality as an undesirable negative state of being, something to apologize for.

We know that this kind of thing plays out on middle school playgrounds across the country every day. Trust us, we remember it well. It shouldn’t, however, be approved or (to a degree) sponsored by a company as large and influential as Google.

Jason did what he’s supposed to do and flagged the app as offensive. After a week of flagging and re-flagging the app, he went to the relevant forums and was scolded by forum members for being so sensitive. (We remember that too.)

Yesterday a Google staffer named Alden responded to Jason’s complaint. The main complaint was that Straight? violates the Android Market Terms of Service, specifically the prohibition against apps that include “promotions of hate or incitement of violence.”

Alden’s response is “Regarding this specific case, though the app may be offensive to some, it is not in violation. Stereotypes in and of themselves do not constitute hate against a group.”

I’m not posting a link to the response. (Here’s a screencap if you must.) My gut is that Alden’s an employee who hit the send button without thinking, and I don’t want him to be inundated with hate mail. Sometimes we need to educate.

As Jason points out on his blog, a joke app that tests whether the user is white or black, using white as the only positive response, would be unacceptable. If that app displayed a negative screen saying “Sorry ni**a, you’re…” under a picture of fried chicken, it would be yanked immediately. It’s a gimme decision. Swap that out for another minority stereotype and see what your reaction is. Now ask yourself why this is any different.

To Alden: The app Straight? is categorically offensive, and more importantly it breaks Google’s Terms of Service not because it is hateful, but because it promotes hate through negatively stereotyping a group of people.

To Google: You’ve been a friend of the LGBT Community for a long time. Thank you for your support in the past. Please correct this error in judgment and continue to support you LGBT users, family, and friends in the future.

Update 2/20/2009: Jason reported this morning that Bendroid has removed the app from the Android Market. The company left the following at the Google help forum: “Hello Everyone. We just want to let you know that we have removed ‘Straight?’ application. We really do not want to offense [sic] or humiliate anyone. We are saying ‘Sorry’ to people who took this app seriously, although it was done just for fun, without any intention to hurt the feelings.”

Still no comment from Google or Android.

Unless you live in Utah, you’ve probably never heard of State Senator Chris Buttars. Like Oklahoma’s Sally Kern he has a lot to say about The Gays, and he said a lot of it when he sat down to talk with Reed Cowan for a yet-to-be-released documentary “8: The Mormon Proposition”. (Go here to read an article about the documentary.)

Chris Buttars Fun Fact: He was born on April Fool's Day. For serious.

Thanks to Reed Cowan Productions and Utah’s ABC4 (with a big gay tip of the hat to Good-As-You) we have audio from the interview, given less than a month ago.

[mp3=http://blog.mattalgren.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/butters_on_gays.mp3]

Sometimes I think this kind of thing is good. Give ‘em a microphone and let ‘em talk. Before long you get references to anti-gay crazy Paul Cameron, The Gays endangering children, The Gays not having morals, The Gays having more diseases, The Gays having more sex partners, The Gays having volatile relationships, The Gays tearing down society, The Gays being “sneaky”, The Gays “acting out”, making Mormon doctrine into federal/state law, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Constitution being “inspired by God”, The Gays = Alcoholics…

Here’s a fun game: Take that list, or even go back to the audio itself, and substitute another minority group every time he says “The Gays”. Interesting how it works almost perfectly.

This guy’s a piece of work, but understand this: A lot of people agree with Chris Buttars. They’re just quieter about it.

Just a quick post today with a couple videos.

First up is from singer/songwriter Matt Alber‘s debut album Hide Nothing. He has a magnificent voice and has released a beautiful video for the single End of the World.

[youtube width="480" height="295"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTvJdpkdLiw[/youtube]

(Album available at amazon.com and itunes. Video directed by Robin Scovill.)

Second is one of my favorite Prop 8 videos from before the vote last November. It’s called Love Poem. If the man with the hat doesn’t break your heart, you have no heart.

[youtube width="480" height="295"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q2R7O-0WRo[/youtube]

Happy Valentine’s Day.

As I said in Tuesday’s post, most news articles about last February’s murder of Larry (Leticia) King has been somewhat biased. Both TIME and Newsweek published articles that attempted to shift blame from Brandon McInerney, the boy who pulled the trigger, and portray Larry as the aggressor. Even The Advocate got into the mix with a cover story called Who’s to Blame?.

Hopefully we can put that nonsense to rest now that Ventura County Deputy District Attorney Maeve Fox has filed a “statement of facts” with the court. Fox soundly refutes several assumptions and paints a clear picture of a bully gone over the edge. The Ventura County Star had the story Wednesday:

King was seen by McInerney and other classmates as effeminate and was of racially mixed heritage, with white and African-American ancestry, according to the court document.

“Larry and the defendant had several classes together and had an acrimonious relationship that was characterized by typical 8th grade back-and-forth insults — some sexual, some not,” the document states.

In the months and weeks before the shooting, King had begun to retort to the ongoing teasing, the document says.

Although King didn’t specifically target McInerney in his verbal sparring, he had words for other classmates, “many of whom tried to degrade and humiliate him to varying degrees on a daily basis,” the document says.

And then on the day before the murder…

A student witness described an argument between King and McInerney during their seventh-period class the day before the shooting. “The defendant was calling Larry derogatory names and Larry was ‘staring’ back at him,” the document says. After King got up and left, McInerney said: “I am going to shoot him,” the student told investigators, according to prosecutors.

A second student witness said she heard King tell McInerney “I love you” as they passed each other in the hallway. McInerney told the student witness that he was “going to get a gun and shoot” King.

Shortly after that, McInerney told a third student to “say goodbye to your friend Larry because you’re never going to see him again,” the document stated. The female student didn’t take the threat seriously.

McInerney is an “adherent of racist skinhead philosophy” and in his room detectives found Nazi, neo-Nazi and racist skinhead materials including books and writings from the Internet and copies of Hitler’s speeches, prosecutors stated.

Thursday’s article in the LA Times fleshed things out a bit more:

“In the days before the shooting, the defendant tried to enlist others to administer a beating to Larry,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Maeve Fox wrote in a “statement of facts” filed with the brief. “When that failed for lack of interest, he decided to kill Larry.”

Witnesses said King was usually not the aggressor. But after months of teasing by McInerney and other male students who called him “faggot,” he had began to retort, according to prosecutors.

The prosecution brief also reveals for the first time that McInerney was familiar with firearms, and that he had used that particular weapon in the past during target shooting with his family.

Investigators found a training video in his possession titled “Shooting in Realistic Environments,” as well as skinhead and neo-Nazi books and similar writings from the Internet, prosecutors wrote.