No longer a hero...

There are few things one can hold in one’s hand that are more significant—at once more precious and more dangerous—than blood. There is nothing more tangible that means more to life—no! life itself!—or with more connotation of such significance. It is pure, holy or blue; it is utterly unclean, in traditions more ancient even than the language we might use to tell it and in the most modern sense of “bio-hazard.” From the time when one brother’s blood called out from the earth to its maker for justice to this morning’s blood sample I gave at the doctor’s, this life-force-fluid is all that keeps us from being a mere pile of ashes. To simpler minds it might have been the breath of God.

Looking at the little vial of my blood as the nurse took it away, I wondered what might become of it. Oh, I’m sure someone will try to grow things in it, look at it through a microscope, maybe even apply a little heat to it to see if it jumps out of the petrie dish. They’ll find it clean, I’m sure, but they won’t return it. It is gone forever, sacrificed for the sake of peace of mind, for the knowledge that the rest of me will be fine, well, good even. I wonder if they’ll put a purple stamp on my butt declaring me “CLEAN.” It is a sacrifice, like many made before—to the greater powers, seeking absolution yet again.

The greatest of all gifts we could give to God—the one thing we couldn’t take back—life. As is common with humans, the Aztecs took it to the extreme and we revile them for it. Medicine men who did not understand its power sought to find a balance in the body by drawing it, spilling it, hoping to take with it what ailed their patients.

I hate needles—deeply, madly, truly—ever since my father would drive me, a sickly child, to a doctor’s office every week to get a multi-vitamin complex shot that left my butt numb and my leg weak the rest of the day. Many years later, when I got married, my wife and I decided to give blood as our little contribution to the bettering of the world. It started when a kid at our high school got in a car accident and they asked us to give blood. We gave. We never stopped. In as brief an interval as was permitted by the blood-bank, we gave again, and again, and kept doing it past our divorce, still going together though we were not together, because some things ought to be done regardless, and that was a good thing. But then, I had to stop.

Men who have had sex with men since 1977 are not permitted to give blood—no exceptions.

My blood was clean. I could prove it. They were going to test it anyway. Still, it was unclean, unwanted. It was my mark of shame—and I, unwilling to lie for their benefit, simply stopped. A gift so rudely questioned is undeserved. Statistically speaking, they might have been right—but I am not a statistic. Responsible and clean, I still felt I had the mark of Cain on my forehead and resented it—hated it—and would not compound it by lying.

The greatest of all gifts we could receive from God—a chalice-full of holiest sharing—a promise of eternal life, given to us from His own hand one day soon to be celebrated all over the world:

this is my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant, that will be shed for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me.

And though I still prayed, the church told me that I was more unclean than all the other sinners who prayed with me, and I stopped going. It is their right, their private club, their rule to make and I shall respect it. I disagree—my God, my Father, for reasons I’ve explained elsewhere ever-forgiving, can see past this “flaw” if such it be and see my heart is clean and my love no less pure than any other man’s—my blood just as red. There are many like me, seeking this God. One day, we will find him, at work, at school, on the bus on the way to a bar, eating a sandwich at Subway’s—there He will be, arms wide open, wounds healed, promising to love me like He asked my fellow men to love me but they failed.

And while I could not lie to keep giving the gift I thought I was giving, others have lied, continue to lie, and continue to give the same gift. Many—perhaps braver—men like me are at this very moment engaged in combat of one kind or another, fighting for a right denied us. It is odd how society in general accepts the product of our labor but denies the laborer behind such fruits. It reminds me of many such fights in the past and saddens me that this is one battle that needs to be fought over and over again on many fronts.

And now our fathers, our brothers, our children go forth into the desert out of which Abraham once came, to spill their blood as the price we pay for liberty. No nobler gift was ever given me, and though they don’t know my name, I shall forever be grateful to each and every single one of them. God bless them. God bless them all: black and white, Latinos and Asians, male and female, citizens and not, straight and gay, left-handed and not; God bless the short and the fat, the tall and the skinny. Their blood is just a precious to me, their gift the greatest I could ever want: the hope that one day my children’s lives will be peaceful. God bless their families.

Politics aside, I can see into their eyes and see their sincerity and their pride, to be the hands—most proud and direct part of all that we as a body do.

But just like one brother’s blood called out of that same sand to its creator clamoring for justice, so shall theirs—justice for their kind, justice for the man, justice for their country and the poor people all around them who suffer the hatred of the intolerant and powerful. Such justice is beyond any man’s power to grant.

May God grant us all the wisdom to recognize it when He sends it our way.