LibertasPost

You know, as a libertarian, I love a good 'stick it to the man' story as much as the next guy ( who's a libertarian), but Kyle Freeman takes it way too far.

Who's Kyle Freeman, you might ask? Well, he's the guy who might have given you syphilis.

I first heard about him when I read this article in the National Post's Full Comment. Kyle is gay, and he wanted to give blood to the Canadian Blood Services organization. Alright, fair enough. Only thing is, if you're a man, and you're in the habit of having sex with other men, you've been outta luck in the blood-giving business since the '70's in both Canada and the States. The risk of contracting HIV is too high: as the Full Comment article pointed out, according to American statistics, gay men are 200 times more likely to be HIV-positive than other blood donors. When you pare things down to repeat blood donors, gay men are 2000 times more likely than the average donor.

So gay men don't donate blood. And I think as a society, we're happy with that.

Well, except for Kyle Freeman. He lied about his sexuality for years, and donated blood for years, too- 18 times between 1990 and June 2002, according to the Ottawa Citizen. Four of these donations were to Canadian Blood Services. Prior to the creation of the Canadian Blood Services in 1998, he donated to Canadian Red Cross.

Needless to say, Canadian Blood Services wasn't happy about this when they found out, and in 2002 they filed a lawsuit against Kyle Freeman. How did they find out? Well, you see, not content with simply lying about the whole thing, Kyle decided to lie about it for years and then email Canadian Blood Services telling them about all the lyin' and donatin' that he'd been doing over the years. He also used the opportunity to complain about the Canadian Blood Services policy against allowing gay men to be donors. I guess that's a soapbox that he just couldn't resist.

The lawsuit doesn't seem to really bother Kyle. He even offered to pay $10,000 in damages to Canadian Blood Services. Or at least, he will if a court doesn't decide that the policy against allowing gay men to donate blood is unconstitutional.

You see, Kyle Freeman recently launched a lawsuit of his own, alleging that the Canadian Blood Services has been violating his charter rights, and the charter righst of all other gay Canadian males - because they ask all male potential blood donors whether or not they've had sex with a man since 1977.

Are you thoroughly disgusted yet? Are you tired of Kyle Freeman yet? Well, there's more. Seems Kyle Freeman had syphilis back when he donated in '02 ( he had not donated for a while before 2002 ). According to the Ottawa Citizen, self-assured as he was, he relied on his own self-assessment as to his sexual health, and his own self-assessment told him that he didn't have STDs at the the time. It was only discovered that he had the disease after the Canadian Blood Services screened the blood that he had donated.

Well. Phew. He's only been lying about his sexuality since 1990. I wonder how many other faulty self-assessments he's performed?

Now, I think Kyle's selfishness and stupidity is self-evident. Any member of the gay community has to acknowledge the fact that they are, quite frankly, in a community at a higher risk of diseases such as HIV. To make the case that he's got a charter right to give his very-potentially-lethal blood whenever he likes is ridiculous. He's no more discriminated against than someone with diabetes, or any other high health risk.

Hell, earlier this year a group of gay activists tried to take the Canadian government to court ( or Human Rights Tribunal, at least ) because it isn't devoting a large enough amount of health-care spending and attention to health issues in the gay community. They're going to court because the government is supposedly not doing enough to keep them alive - while acknowledging that the gay community has a higher risk of contracting certain illnesses. Kyle Freeman is going to court to ensure that, once the government has patched them up, gay men across the country can give as much blood as they like.

What could go wrong there?

Whatever. Kyle needs to remember that this isn't about him.

He isn't the only one who's forgotten, of course. One similar case that I can think of is that of Kimberly Nixon, a transgendered man-turned-woman who took the Vancouver Rape Relief clinic to the BC Human Rights Tribunal because they wouldn't let her become one of their councilors. The clinic had declined to have her as a councilor because it could disturb or frighten the damaged women that they were dealing with - which outweighed Mrs. Nixon's feelings at the time. Years later, the Supreme Court of British Columbia finally exonerated the Clinic's decision ( turning over the ruling of the BC Human Rights Tribunal, which had sided with Nixon ). Kimberley Nixon went to the BC Court of Appeal, which backed up the BC Supreme Court decision. Then she went to the Supreme Court of Canada, which declined to see her case.

Again - it's the same sort of behavior. A bizarrely selfish form of altruism. It's kind of sad, really. What's even sadder is when our court system tolerates these heights of self-absorption.

Kyle Freeman, give it a rest.