Free Phone Sex For Hemophiliacs?

Free Phone-Porn for Hemophiliacs?

By Denise Noe

One welcome development in an era in which sexually transmitted diseases are epidemic and at least one STD, AIDS, is life-threatening, is the proliferation of phone-sex lines since they provide disease-proof sexual relief. Conversing with a phone sex operator cannot transmit any STD in either direction nor can it result in an abortion or a baby born under unpromising circumstances

Of course, phone sex services ARE expensive (and they are rightly off-limits to minors).

It seems to me that there are good reasons to consider making phone sex services available for free to one small segment of the population. That segment is the hemophiliac population. Hemophiliacs use special blood products to stem the excessive bleeding characteristic of hemophilia. In the late 1970s-mid-1980s, many hemophiliacs were infected with HIV through these products. The National Hemophilia Foundation reports that there have been no new HIV infections through the blood products in the U.S. since 1987 when viral inactivation methods were introduced to treat them. Many hemophiliacs remain infected from the period prior to 1987.

Unfortunately, the appalling and misleading term “innocent victim” has been applied to hemophiliacs and those infected through blood transfusions. The term is hideous because it implies that those infected in other ways are somehow “guilty.”

Without in any way supporting the foul idea that anyone who has HIV is “guilty,” it is possible to see hemophiliacs as legitimately different than other people with HIV or at special risk for getting HIV. There are approximately 20,000 hemophiliacs in the United States. They are numerically much smaller than either gay men or intravenous drug users. 

Unlike intravenous drug users and, to a lesser extent, gay men, hemophiliacs are not concentrated in major urban areas.  As a tiny and widely dispersed group, hemophiliacs cannot (as gay men can and do) easily form clubs and community programs to facilitate safe sex practices.

It would hardly make sense for a charity to attempt to satisfy the sexual needs of any large segment of our population.  But in the case of a very small, discrete, and easily verifiable group like hemophiliacs, would it not be praiseworthy to institute a free-of-charge phone sex service?

Who could object to giving such a charity tax-exempt status? As noted, phone sex does not lead to abortions. Some might object that singling out hemophiliacs for a special service since such special attention to them could be interpreted as supporting the odious "guilty vs. innocent" view of HIV-positive people.  This is a valid objection.  But it ought not to be a fatal one since, as this essay has pointed out, hemophiliacs are distinct from other risk groups in significant ways besides their route of infection.

How about it?

How about a charity devoted to free phone sex for hemophiliacs?