Senators: Lift ban on gays donating blood

(Washington) The time has come to change a policy that imposes a lifetime ban on donating blood for any man who has had gay sex since 1977, 18 senators said Thursday.

“Not a single piece of scientific evidence supports the ban,” said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who joined 16 other Democrats …

Lesbians in China petition to donate blood

(Beijing) Lesbians in China have organized an online petition calling for gay people to be allowed to donate blood, state media reported Tuesday.

The petition, asking the government to remove a law enacted in 1998 banning the gay community from donating blood, has drawn 540 signatures from lesbians and aims to …

Gay Montclair University Student Protests Ban on Donating Blood

A 20-year-old sophomore at Montclair State University, Weinstein signed up to donate blood last November at a Red Cross blood drive on campus because, he said, “I thought it would be a nice thing to do.”

But when Weinstein, who is gay, answered “yes” on a questionnaire asking whether or not he had had sexual relations with another man since 1977, American Red Cross volunteers running the drive told him that he was ineligible to be a donor.

“My initial reaction was absolute shock. I thought, there’s no way,” Weinstein, a Randolph native, said last week.

For the past several months, blood supplies around New Jersey have hit critically low levels. Karen Ferriday, a spokeswoman for Community Blood Services in Oradell, said blood stores, which optimally provide three to five days worth of blood, have fallen to half-day supplies for the past several months.

Still, donors like Weinstein have found themselves turned away from donating because a Food and Drug Administration regulation born at the height of the AIDS scare in 1983 still places a lifetime ban on blood donations by gay and bisexual men.

Women who have had sex with a gay or bisexual partner are out, too.

See