I already knew about Red Cross' idiotic policy of discrimination against gay men, despite the technological advances in HIV testing and all that. One question on their screening procedure that bars you from donating blood is "Have you ever had sex with a man, even once."

Well, add another level of idiocy and hypocrisy to the list. This is an organization that is collecting desperately needed blood to provide blood and plasma infusions to people in emergency rooms, in surgery, and at disaster sites, whose lives hang from a thin red thread.

For years and years, Red Cross has warned that we have a critical shortage of blood donations, and that our national and regional blood supplies are down to a couple of days' worth. That means that if there is a disaster like Hurricane Katrina, 911, that we won't have enough blood to give transfusions to the injured people. I can't even guess how the military gets enough blood to deal with all the combat injuries our troops endure in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That weighed on my mind, so I felt I'd better stop procrastinating and go drop a pint or two. I had been a slacker and haven't donated blood in the last six years. When they brought the Bloodmobile to my office, it was a perfect opportunity.

But in the screening, I was told that I was not permitted to donate blood because I had lived in Amsterdam for 9 years.

One of the many idiotic screening rules bars people from donating blood if they have lived longer than 5 years in a country where Mad Cow Disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) had occurred. In humans, if you eat the contaminated meat of cows infected with Mad Cow, you can contract the fatal brain disease variant Creutzfeld Jacob Disease.

Well, there were a few instances of Mad Cow in the Netherlands. But they pulled the meat from the shelves and it was over. Like a dozen people in the whole country contracted it. Your chances of getting it are EXTREMELY low. It can't be passed from human to human, unless through a blood transfusion (or if you eat someone's brain who has it).

So I can't donate blood in the United States...ever.

Red Cross, thanks for all you do, but fuck you.