Ay Caramba!

Music icon Vicente Fernandez refused liver transplant fearing it came from gay donor

Mexican crooner Vincente Fernandez has raised more than a few eyebrows with an admission: He turned down a much-needed liver transplant over fears the organ would come from a gay man.

Fernandez, known in Mexico as “El Rey” (The King), has sewn a long and esteemed career as a singer of Ranchero music. Now 79, the singer revealed he discovered he had liver cancer during his farewell tour in 2012. Rather than get an immediate liver transplant, Fernandez refused a donated organ over fears that it could come from a gay man or drug addict (how classy that he equates the two).

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“They wanted to put a liver of another bastard,” Fernandez recalled during an interview with the Mexican talk show De Primera Mano.  “I said: ‘I’m not going to sleep with my wife with the liver of another guy. I do not know if he was a homosexual or a drug addict.'”

Fernandez eventually relented and underwent a successful transplant in Chile. Though now retired from live performance, he continues to record and write new music.

The multiple Grammy Award-winner has recorded over 50 albums.

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