A disgraceful and short story about prejudice and ignorance in today's Greece.
This diary is translated from the pages of a centrist newspaper with an aversion to populism. A real story about the disgrace of the human condition and the status of the ignorant mindset of a supposedly "European" country. A country in which I was brought up and raised in.
A young 25 year old male with persistent lymph node swelling gets some blood tests to test for cancer serum markers and antibodies against HIV. He is found to be seropositive. His Dr. advises him to not tell a single soul. Panicked, he informs his manager at work who offers generous compensation, but requires his resignation because co-workers would raise issues about handshakes and bathroom use.
He refuses to resign, is fired and goes to the supreme court of Greece. The employer argues that half of the company was already aware of his seroconversion and refused to share a space with him. The supreme court finds her argument convincing and constitutional and upholds the firing.
To underscore the hypocrisy of the Greek society I would inform you that widely available statistics in Greece show the extent of unsafe sex, prejudice and ignorance in Greece: one in every four pregnancies in Greece are aborted.
I won't get into the pro-choice issue of that statistic one though I think that most pro-choice people will agree that the above figure is too high. But one thing I will say, is that a country so rich in history and culture has been gripped by fear and easy living.
A symptom of the pathetic uninformed attitude of most Greeks is the above story. Shame.