Last week’s Got Ignorance? rally was a beautiful and well-needed event, but where are the masses this week to denote the discrimination against gay men by the Food and Drug Administration at Golden Key Honor Society and Theta Xi Fraternity’s Bone Marrow Donor Drive?

If you’ve had sex with another guy since 1977 (which is before many of us were born), then you’re currently not eligible to donate blood, regardless of whether or not you’ve engaged in safe sex or been tested for HIV. This includes bone marrow.

Of the approximately 4 million donors registered by the National Marrow Donation Program, only 30 percent are people of color. Marrow genes are inherited.

Thus, the greatest chance for finding a matched marrow donor exists within a patient’s family or within their own racial or ethnic group.

African American, Latino, Asian and Native Americans are underrepresented in the registry. Many minority patients never find matches on the registry and lose their lives. While a Caucasian donor may find over 150 perfect matches by searching the registry, a minority patient’s chances can be as low as one in 100. Excluding gay men of color from the process is only another way that people of color are shut out.

Issues of gender, sexuality and race are interconnected, and it is important in our “multi-cultural” society to address them with equal consideration.

The FDA’s discriminatory regulations may not impact every one of us, but in some small way, a barrier to the freedom of any group of individuals is another barrier to our progression as a society.

Got ignorance?

Joel Taylor

Sophomore

Political science