One of my Best Friends Lies about his Sex Life because he's Poor and Gay

And he shouldn't have to. See, to donate blood in America requires that one maintain a certain level of ritual purity. This pious state-of-affairs requires that, in addition to not having venereal disease, traveling to areas effected by blood disease, not having had certain vaccinations within a certain time period, not having taken illegal drugs through IV and other perfectly reasonable requirements--one also must not be a practicing homosexual. They used to not accept the blood of people-of-african-american-heritage for the same goddamn reason.

Donating plasma on a regular basis can provide a modest stream of income to those who are willing and able to pump out the goods. If one reads the documentation one is technically compensated for time, rather than being paid for the blood-plasma which, supposedly, is freely given. Many people, usually poor, choose to do this and the clinic is happy to filter out the plasma and give back the red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets and whatever else and send them out the door with some money on their card. It's hard being broke in America and programs like this help out while also providing the medical system with much-needed plasma for transfer and research purposes. Before donating one must fill out a questionnaire, when I asked my good friend what he does when he gets to the question about whether or not he has had sexual contact with a man in the last six months he said he simply lies. WHY SHOULD HE HAVE TO? He seems to be a perfectly good citizen in all other respects, maybe he didn't register to vote or whatever, but he seems to respect the state and the medical establishment enough not to lie to it about most things. I get the feeling that if he were not rewarded for lying or punished for telling the truth he would choose to tell the truth as he is not ashamed of his sexuality. Nor should he be. 

Call me a philosopher but I think it is a good thing-in-itself for people not to lie. And if a system can be designed/reformed such that it allows good people--or at least people who happen to do medically or morally irrelevant things--not to lie about those things, then that system should be adopted IMMEDIATELY.