Ironically, the party whose long-time chairman uttered the phrase “Better a cold warrior than a warm brother”, which branded homosexuals as HIV carriers and from whose ranks the idea of a camp for people infected with HIV and AIDS was made public in 1987 came – precisely that party is campaigning for an end to blood donation restrictions for homosexuals. The expert is amazed and the layman is amazed.
The topic is currently in the Bundestag again, and the longer the discussions go on, the more ridiculous the advocates of the status quo make themselves. The long-standing blood donation for homosexuals became an act of grace in 2017: If you forego sexual encounters for 12 months, you can of course also donate blood as a gay man.
Hossa, what did we celebrate!
Some eighth graders are much further along. One of my HIV prevention events also dealt with blood donation and organ transplants. A schoolgirl timidly answers and asks whether HIV-positive men could donate blood or organs for other positive men.
Even if it sounds a little absurd – I was thrilled to see what ideas such young people can have, even if it cannot be realized that way.
But donate blood! Around 15,000 blood donations are needed every day in Germany, but only 2 to 3% of the population regularly go to pricks that can save other people’s lives. And the trend is downward.
Here again the discriminatory attitude of the heterosexual majority is taking revenge, which reduces homosexuality exclusively to sexuality, but otherwise only very hesitantly recognizes the person behind it.
Certainly the hairdresser is nice, the pop singer or actor looks good and the colleague is polite too – but do I have to let someone like that help me when things get on a knife edge? The argument of the HIV risk should be finally off the table, after all, the relevant laboratory tests are already considered safe after six weeks. So there is no need for more time to pass before the blood donation.
In addition, according to the Robert Koch Institute, around 56,000 men in Germany were infected with HIV after having had homosexual contact, but one can easily assume that there are more than 2, if not 3 million gay men in Germany. Even if the willingness to donate blood was only 2 to 3% here, there would be at least 50,000 other blood donors who are currently being easily avoided.
And it is precisely on this topic that the CSU opens up! The sweeping assertion that homosexual people behave less responsibly is not acceptable, it sounds in unison from the parliamentary group management of the Bundestag and the general secretariat.
But even the Christian Socials can’t quite get out of their skin. Internally, the reason for the move is that they do not want to support the ideological draft of the Greens, but would rather submit their own proposal with the SPD. Anyone who thinks ideologically here does not need to be mentioned further …
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