Today there is an interesting article in the Melbourne Age:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/blood-review-on-gays-20100412-s48f.html
This is an issue for gay people all over the world. In Australia, there have been several attempts to challenge the discriminatory practices of the Red Cross, most notably the efforts of Michael Cain in Launceston mentioned in the Age article.
The fact is that statistically the issue is not about gay men in particular, but more about risky practices. While the current rules stem from the early days of the discovery of HIV, when tests to detect the virus were unreliable and took a long time, medical science has now moved to a point where the tests are much quicker and also much more reliable.
This means that there are many gay men who can safely donate blood. At the same time, there have always been, and still are, many heterosexual people engaging in risky practices who donate blood.
Our country is comparable to other similar nations such as Canada and Sweden. Sweden, having taken a sensible look at the issue, has reversed the ban on gay men donating blood, concentrating on risky behaviour rather than singling out one group of “risky” people. Even Russia, normally regarded as quite homophobic, reversed its ban on gay blood donors from May 2008.
Meanwhile, as late as September last year a Canadian man was prosecuted for donating blood, having simply lied about his sexual orientation on the donor questionnaire.
This begs the question, “How many Australian donors are simply lying on their questionnaires?” Surely, the responsible thing for the Red Cross to do is to put in place blood screening procedures which would detect any blood borne diseases in any donated blood, irrespective of who the donors are — as any donor may be lying about having engaged in risky practice (such as drug use with needle sharing, unprotected heterosexual sex etc).
The original rules were put in place for a good reason, but that reason was the difficulty of detecting HIV, which is now no longer the case. Now in the 21st century it is time to make new rules that reflect the reality of medical science and not a knee-jerk reaction to something that was not understood at the time it occurred, back in the 20th century.
The important thing about changing the rules to reflect the present state of medical science, is that as long as such discriminatory policies exist, based on a blanket categorisation of all gay men, many people in society (such as ignorant, homophobic politicians) feel confident in pointing to such rules as a way of validating their fear and loathing of gay people in general. The sooner this kind of broad, and statistically unsound, discrimination is ended, wherever it occurs, the sooner people in general will feel that there is nothing in particular that makes gays “different” in the sense of something to fear, distrust or dislike.
It will be interesting to see what the politicians and media columnists chime in and say about this issue as it will be a telling indicator of their level of ignorance or intelligence.
For some more information about this issue, see the following pages:
http://gay.americablog.com/2009/12/sweden-to-end-ban-on-gay-blood-donors.html
http://www.slapupsidethehead.com/2008/05/russia-reverses-gay-blood-ban-canada-still-lags/
http://www.slapupsidethehead.com/2009/09/canadian-blood-services-sues-gay-man-for-donating-blood/
http://www.365gay.com/opinion/culhane-its-time-to-end-the-gay-blood-ban/
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
The time has come, the wizard said, to speak of many things ...
“The time has come, the wizard said, to speak of many things”, to paraphrase Alice in Wonderland.
In the not-too-distant future, Australia will be facing a national election.
At the last election, the choice for GLBTQ people was clear. Labor was a definite front-runner for gay rights when compared to the Liberals. Under John Howard’s conservative regime, gay rights was moving backwards towards the 1950s. This was also true about women’s rights, workers’ rights, refugees’ rights, and many other rights of natural justice which have been hard-won in the past.
Many thought at the time that a Labor government headed by Kevin Rudd would bring a new era to Australian society, and move us forward into the 21st century. But Rudd has proven to be a dud.
While the majority of the Labor MPs at a Federal level have indicated support for gay marriage, Kevin Rudd has made it clear that will never happen “on his watch”.
So in effect, the Labor party, under the current leader, could be considered to have betrayed the Australian GLBTQ community.
Some people will now point to the 85 pieces of legislation which the Federal government amended under labour to remove anti-gay discriminatory language. I applaud the Labor party for this work, which was well overdue. However, the one important piece of legislation which would have shown that GLBTI people are truly considered equal — the Marriage Act — remains as discriminatory as ever. This is purely a result of Kevin Rudd’s personal conservative religious world view.
Unfortunately, Tony Abbott provides no hope in that regard as true colours have been well shown in his recent quasi-homophobic statements and well-known allegiance to Roman Catholic ideals.
A valiant attempt by the Greens to remedy this injustice was struck down by a joint attack of both major parties. This is particularly interesting to me at this point.
The fact is, both the Labor and Liberal parties are conservative parties under their current leaders. Increasingly it is becoming apparent to me (and I am sure to many others) that their relevance is fading as they hold on to 20th century ideas and refuse to move into the 21st century.
At the same time, support for the Greens is increasing — they are no longer just a “loony left” party to be ridiculed and discounted — one only has to consider the recent Tasmanian election results to see this.
Accordingly, running up to the election I am intending to regularly blog about issues relevant to the Australian GLBTQ community, to the Australian pagan community, and to 21st century Australians in general about the issues which will be important at the next election.
I will be encouraging people to abandon outdated party loyalties given to the major parties in favour of the Greens and also independent candidates who show intelligence and futuristic thinking.
Keep checking back for updates on a regular basis. Comments will be allowed but will be moderated (troll-free zone!).
In the not-too-distant future, Australia will be facing a national election.
At the last election, the choice for GLBTQ people was clear. Labor was a definite front-runner for gay rights when compared to the Liberals. Under John Howard’s conservative regime, gay rights was moving backwards towards the 1950s. This was also true about women’s rights, workers’ rights, refugees’ rights, and many other rights of natural justice which have been hard-won in the past.
Many thought at the time that a Labor government headed by Kevin Rudd would bring a new era to Australian society, and move us forward into the 21st century. But Rudd has proven to be a dud.
While the majority of the Labor MPs at a Federal level have indicated support for gay marriage, Kevin Rudd has made it clear that will never happen “on his watch”.
So in effect, the Labor party, under the current leader, could be considered to have betrayed the Australian GLBTQ community.
Some people will now point to the 85 pieces of legislation which the Federal government amended under labour to remove anti-gay discriminatory language. I applaud the Labor party for this work, which was well overdue. However, the one important piece of legislation which would have shown that GLBTI people are truly considered equal — the Marriage Act — remains as discriminatory as ever. This is purely a result of Kevin Rudd’s personal conservative religious world view.
Unfortunately, Tony Abbott provides no hope in that regard as true colours have been well shown in his recent quasi-homophobic statements and well-known allegiance to Roman Catholic ideals.
A valiant attempt by the Greens to remedy this injustice was struck down by a joint attack of both major parties. This is particularly interesting to me at this point.
The fact is, both the Labor and Liberal parties are conservative parties under their current leaders. Increasingly it is becoming apparent to me (and I am sure to many others) that their relevance is fading as they hold on to 20th century ideas and refuse to move into the 21st century.
At the same time, support for the Greens is increasing — they are no longer just a “loony left” party to be ridiculed and discounted — one only has to consider the recent Tasmanian election results to see this.
Accordingly, running up to the election I am intending to regularly blog about issues relevant to the Australian GLBTQ community, to the Australian pagan community, and to 21st century Australians in general about the issues which will be important at the next election.
I will be encouraging people to abandon outdated party loyalties given to the major parties in favour of the Greens and also independent candidates who show intelligence and futuristic thinking.
Keep checking back for updates on a regular basis. Comments will be allowed but will be moderated (troll-free zone!).
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