Today's Shame

Give her the Dunce Cap!

  I've known folks who were mentally disabled my entire life.  A neighbor is now in her 60's - physically.  Mentally, closer to 8.  Spiritually, she's an angel.
  Oh, we all know kids who are terrors, and "adult children" can be just the same.  Still, there is a special quality, a special grace given to those who never grow up.  Innocence is a way of life, and joy in so many of their experiences.  My neighbor would grow bored, as many of us do, but she found such joy in very simple things and left me with the understanding that wisdom hides itself in very interesting places.
  When I was young, just graduating from high school and entering into college, I applied for a position working with disabled people.  I did work with the Emotionally Impaired, and the Mentally Impaired, and did some work with Autistic/Mentally Impaired - which is a huge challenge.  But, topping the list of it all were those listed as Severely Mentally Impaired.  I just didn't have enough heart for that group, and hold nothing but respect for those who do.
  But, what do we say when we allow someone, who I will grant has done likely the best she could, to simply dump an adult child by the side of the road?  Did she panic and seek freedom at the moment's whim?  Did she plan this?  When a parent/guardian takes on the responsibility of a child, no matter the age or challenges, then some certain expectations do come along.  Chief among them:  don't leave the child along the side of the road at a bar!

Shame on you, miss!

An interesting issue does arrive:  How do we define "adult"?  Is an adult a person 18 years of age or greater?  Shouldn't there be a certain level of self-sufficiency to establish 'adulthood'?  How about those who are 18 chronologically, but much much younger in all other ways?  For that matter, we are now charging kids as young as 11 as an adult if they do something so irresponsible and unthinking as commit a crime, while at the same time telling anyone under 16 that they can't have sex; telling anyone under the age of 18 that they can't buy smokes; telling anyone under 21 that they can't have alcohol - and yet calling an 11 year old that he's now an adult!   Bah!   Only the government can be this stupid!

(CNN) -- An Illinois woman who left her mentally disabled daughter outside a Tennessee bar cannot be charged with a crime, police said Tuesday.     (video and story available at this link)

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/10/us/mother-abandons-disabled-daughter/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Police in Caryville, Tennessee, said the daughter is 19 and not assigned to a legal guardian.

"As terrible as it is, unfortunately there is nothing we can do," Assistant Police Chief Stephanie Smith said. "There is no doubt we need a law for mental health rights, but pending this investigation, we just don't know what else to do."
According to police, Eva Cameron stopped at the Big Orange Bar in Caryville on June 28 when her daughter, Lynn, needed to use the restroom.
The mother left Lynn by the side of the road and returned to her home in Algonquin, Illinois, according to Smith.
"(Lynn) didn't know her age, she didn't know her address, she didn't know her phone number and she didn't even know her name," Smith said.
Eva Cameron told the Northwest Herald newspaper in Illinois that she brought Lynn to Caryville because of its concentration of Baptists and because Tennessee has the "No. 1 health care system in the United States of America."
The young woman's identity was unknown until Caryville police received an anonymous tip on Monday, having released a picture and requested information from the public.
At their request, Eva Cameron had a brief meeting with Caryville police on Tuesday. She signed a statement saying that Lynn Cameron was now a ward of Tennessee, officials said.
"She basically said, 'I don't want her and I don't want to take her.' Then she got in her car and she left," said Smith.
When reached later Tuesday by CNN, Eva Cameron said, "We understand she lost her ID card and that's how the situation has turned into what happened. She's already an adult. I just have to leave it at that."

Eva Cameron would not answer further questions.

Authorities took Lynn Cameron to a hospital, where she was discovered to have only a basic vocabulary of 30-40 words, according to Smith.
A Campbell County Chancery Court order in the case described Lynn Cameron as a "severely disabled adult, suffering from profound mental deficits, and is unable to care for herself or her personal needs."
According to the court, the mother stated "she could not and would not care for Lynn Cameron."
Eva Cameron said that she has another disabled child and that caring for both was too much to handle, according to the Northwest Herald.
Authorities said Lynn Cameron is being cared for at a facility in Roane County.

When asked how the young woman is doing, Smith replied, "Lynn is doing fantastic."

In the Very Same Way

And Suddenly We Are Needed, So Perhaps Not Quite So Bad

CNN) -- The American Red Cross says power outages created by recent storms in the East and Midwest cut blood donations, which were already low this summer. In June there was a nationwide shortfall, with donations down more than 10% across the country.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/06/health/gay-men-blood-ban/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
"We are asking people to please call 1-800-RED-CROSS or visit us at redcrossblood.org to find a way to donate if they can," said Stephanie Millian, Red Cross director of biomedical communications. "We need people's help."

One group that would like to help, but legally can't, may be moving one step closer to eligibility. Since the 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic decimated their community, gay men -- or MSMs (men who have sex with men) as they are called by federal agencies -- have not been allowed to donate blood. In June, a group of 64 U.S. legislators led by Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Illinois, and Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services encouraging it to move forward with a study that may lead to the end of the decades-old ban.

"We remain concerned that a blanket deferral of MSM for any length of time both perpetuates the unwarranted discrimination against the bisexual and gay community and prevents healthy men from donating blood without a definitive finding of added benefit to the safety of the blood supply," the letter said.

China lifts ban on lesbians giving blood

"This is a matter of life and death and we are turning away over 50,000 healthy men who want to donate blood," Quigley told CNN. "A straight person who has unsafe sex with multiple partners can give blood, and that creates a greater risk than a gay person in a monogamous relationship."

The policy started at a time when people didn't know how the deadly virus that causes AIDS spread. At the time, there wasn't a good test to detect whether HIV was present in donated blood, and HIV was getting into the nation's blood supply. They knew this because hemophiliacs who were getting blood transfusions started showing symptoms of AIDS. What scientists also knew was that a disproportionate number of gay men were affected by the virus.

To eliminate risk, the Food and Drug Administration added a screening question to the federal guidelines. Blood banks were instructed to ask male donors if they had had sex with a man, even once, since 1977. The FDA regards 1977 as the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the United States. If the potential donor responded "yes," he would automatically be removed from the donor pool for life.

No similar questions were asked to screen out donors who engaged in other potentially risky sexual behavior. Donors weren't asked about the number of partners they had, nor were they asked if their sexual partners had engaged in unprotected sex with other HIV positive partners.

"While the Red Cross is obligated by law to follow the FDA guidelines, we continue to work with the AABB (formerly known as the American Association of Blood Banks) to push through policies that would be much more fair and consistent among donors who engage in similar risk activities," Millian said.

Scientists can now screen for most instances of HIV within days of infection, and the nation's blood banks have called a lifetime ban "medically and scientifically unwarranted."

Men who have sex with men still are disproportionately affected by the virus and account for nearly half the approximately 1.2 million people living with HIV in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But it is a person's behavior, not their sexual orientation, that puts them at risk say health experts.

While he is a gay man, Adam Denney thinks he would be the perfect candidate to donate blood. He doesn't use IV drugs. He practices safer sex. He even educates people on how to prevent new HIV infections as a regular volunteer educator with AIDS Volunteers Inc. in Lexington, Kentucky. He thinks his exclusion is unfair.

"Yes, gay men are still a high-risk community, but so are minority women, and there are no standards prohibiting them from donating. There would be rightful outrage against that kind of blanket population ban," Denney said. "I am banned based on one reason only, my sexual orientation. It's totally discriminatory."

When Denney went to donate at a blood drive on the Eastern Kentucky University Campus a few years ago, he said he knew what likely would happen when the nurses asked the sexual history question. "I did know what I was getting into, but I was shocked by how it felt to be rejected," he said. "It was almost like they thought I wasn't important enough to give blood, like because I was gay I didn't count. It was a horrible feeling."

Parts of UK lift lifetime ban on gay men donating blood

Nathan Schaefer with GMHC, an AIDS service organization, said Denney normally would be the type of donor blood banks are hungry for. Studies show those who give blood when they are young become regular lifetime donors, something most blood banks are struggling to find these days. GMHC has been fighting to change the ban for years.

In 2010 GMHC joined a coalition of other nonprofits to encourage Congress to send a letter to HHS to end the ban, which some members of congress did. In June of that year, HHS brought together an independent panel of experts. The Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability reviewed the policy and decided to keep it and concluded the ban was "suboptimal," because it allows high-risk individuals to donate while keeping low-risk donors out. However, the expert committee also concluded "available scientific data are inadequate to support change to a specific alternate policy." The panel suggested the policy not be changed and recommended further evaluation.

HHS then promised to conduct feasibility studies to determine if there was a subset of the gay male population that would pose little or no threat to the blood supply. "We finally got them to stop defending the policy at the very least, which was pretty significant," Schaefer said.

The HHS is still determining the criteria for which part of the population to study.

GMHC suggested the population to consider should include gay men who have had only one sex partner in the past six months. Spain and Italy, two countries with more progressive donor policies, hold everyone to that standard regardless of sexual orientation.

Schaefer takes the point one step further. "A straight person could donate today after having unprotected sex with hundreds of partners, and in the United States they won't ask about that behavior," he said. He added that four out of five gay men are HIV negative, which he estimated means 2 million additional people could be blood donors.

A 2010 study by the Williams Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles estimated that if gay men who had not had sexual contact for the past 12 months were allowed to donate blood, more than 53,000 additional men would likely make more than 89,000 blood donations. That number may seem small, but blood banks say it could help enormously, especially now, when blood supply shortages are common.

After Denney was denied the chance to donate, he asked some of his friends to help him demonstrate outside the blood drive. They produced signs to raise awareness about the ban and distributed educational material. They also escorted people to the drive, because they wanted people to continue to donate. "A lot of people in the Bible Belt assume you have AIDS if you are a gay man," he said. "We wanted them to understand that is not the case. We are banned based on an outdated policy. When people questioned us, I told them about how I always heard that people who donate blood are heroes. Gay men want to be heroes, too."

He taught us as children, yet we forget as adults...

Hi Friends;

  I would like to dedicate this link and post to all those who think themselves so magnificent for nothing more than birth.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3yJomUhs0g

Living the life illegal....

Imagine if it were illegal to have blue eyes or be under 5ft 10ins and if breaking this law meant you could go to prison or face attack or even death. In many countries around the world, gay people don’t have to imagine it. They already face the very real prospect of being criminalised for their sexuality. In no fewer than 78 countries around the world homosexual acts are still illegal. In five of them the maximum penalty is death.


http://milkboys.org/article/illegal-to-be-you/


Hi Friends;
  What a frightening concept.  I guess I've grown accustomed to being a second class citizen in this land of the free.  I guess I've come to accept, if in no other way than exasperation, that those who are homosexual are treated differently for no other reason than the lover in their bed.  And oddly, we are still expected to profer the same taxes - more, in fact as we are not given the benefits of marriage.  And yet, in all of that, we are given yet a certain degree of freedom inherent in being an American - if not the perfect freedom, at least the right to yet live, provided one doesn't listen to North Carolina politicians or preachers. 
  I mourn for a world that still houses such horrid people and places them in leadership positions so as to create cultures and political environments where one can be a criminal for loving another consenting adult.  I don't care about Kim Kardashian, what Britney Spears wears at the next talent show, or the incessant ranting of spoiled men and women of politics who create little but noise.  There are people dying, wasting away in prison, and living in fear for no reason more than prejudice.