Blogswarm For Pam Spaulding

Pam Spaulding, the blogmistress for Pam's House Blend, and one of the smartest and humblest people in the LGBT blogosphere, recently announced that she is having major surgery today and will be taking a month of unpaid leave from her day job. The PHB (or Blend) community has stepped up by setting up a PayPal fund to help her out with expenses and show support for all her contributions to the LGBT community. Many other blogs like Joe.My.God, LGBT POV and TowleRoad are all participating in the blogswarm for Pam.

Gay Blood Donor Ban Retained By 9-6 Vote

The Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability of the Department of Health and Human Services voted 9-6 on Friday to retain the current policy (in place since 1983) of preventing any man who has had sex with a man since 1977 from donating blood for the rest of their life.

Earlier this year, Senator John Kerry and a group of lawmakers sent a letter urging the FDA reconsider its long-held policy. The Los Angeles Times encouraged (sorta) the change.

Reporting from The Advocate:

Addressing the committee on Thursday, Kerry said he was joined by the nation's largest blood-banking organizations in opposition to the current policy. The American Red Cross, the American Association of Blood Banks, and America’s Blood Centers have all blasted the policy as “scientifically and medically unwarranted.”

"This is a discussion with real social significance for gay men," Kerry said before the committee. "They are clearly the target of this policy, which was initiated in the early '80s, when little was known about HIV/AIDS, except that gay men seemed to be contracting it almost exclusively. Today, this lingering policy carries with it a social stigma for this population that is still engaged in battles for civil rights on a whole array of fronts."

In a unanimous vote the panel also called the policy "suboptimal," however, and recommended that distinctions be made between low- and high-risk potential gay donors in a report to the assistant secretary of HHS.

I suspect the question of who gets appointed to this committee in the future as well as possible federal legislation will be next steps. LGBT groups are NOT HAPPY.

BLOGSWARM: Revise FDA Gay Blood Donor Ban

Rod 2.0 and other blogs are doing a blogswarm today to end the ban on gay men donating blood.

Here is a letter summarizing the scientific and social reasons for revising the ban for yourconvenience. Feel free to copy and paste into an e-mail to jerry.holmberg@hhs.gov

Jerry A. Holmberg, PhD
Executive Secretary
Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability
Office of Public Health and Science
Department of Health and Human Services
1101 Wooton Parkway, Suite 250
Rockville, MD 20852

June 10, 2010

Dear Dr. Holmberg,

I am pleased that the Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability (ACBSA) is planning to review the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) decades-long ban on blood donation by any man who has had sex with another man since 1977. I strongly urge the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to review its policy prohibiting gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (MSM) from donating blood.

The FDA's current blood donor eligibility policies are largely inconsistent, imposing significantly less restrictive deferrals to heterosexual men and women who engage in high-risk sexual behavior, yet banning gay and bisexual men who are HIV-negative, consistently practice safe sex, or are in monogamous, long-term relationships. This policy reinforces inaccurate stereotypes about gay men and HIV, and results in a significant loss of healthy blood donors.

The advent of new HIV testing technologies, which can detect HIV directly and has a window period of only 9-11 days after infection, has provided scientific and technological reasons to reconsider the policy. In the face of chronic blood shortages in the nation's blood supply, the unnecessary exclusion of large numbers of HIV-negative blood donors may harm patients in need of blood transfusions.

I join a growing consensus of voices who have called for reform of the FDA's donor eligibility policy. Many public health experts, the American Red Cross, the American Association of Blood Banks, America's Blood Centers, and others have supported reforming the policy. Additionally, 18 U.S. Senators, as well as U.S. Representatives, have recently sent letters to the FDA calling for the long-standing policy's review and modification.

It is both timely and necessary that an exhaustive review of alternative policies is conducted. I encourage Health and Human Services (HHS) and the FDA to act quickly to address our mutual concern for expanding the blood donor pool and ensuring the safety and adequacy of our nation's blood supply.

Sincerely,

Blogswarm: Call HRC To Demand Action on DADT!

There's a blogswarm going on today to ramp up the pressure on getting the LGBT community's largest organization to insist on ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell this year, as President Obama said at the State of the Union address a few weeks ago:

OUR MESSAGE TO HRC IS SIMPLE:

Publicly demand that President Obama take the lead in getting DADT repealed this year.

1) That means the President needs to state publicly that he wants Congress to repeal DADT this year; and

2) The President needs to take the lead in working with Congress to make sure the repeal happens.

HRC Front Desk: (202) 628-4160
TTY: (202) 216-1572
Toll-Free: (800) 777-4723

HRC Web site comment page.
General membership email at hrc: membership@hrc.org

Some may say that there is little the President can do, or that this is up to Congress now. That is simply untrue. The President can send a powerful signal that he wants the repeal done this year. He can include the repeal of DADT in the Defense Budget he sends to Congress in the next few months. If the President is serious about keeping his promises to our community, now is his chance to prove it.

BLOG SWARM SPONSORS

Today's blog swarm is sponsored by the following bloggers and sites, all of which will also be writing about this issue today, and urging their readers to contact HRC:

Joe Sudbay and John Aravosis, AMERICAblog
Pam Spaulding, Pam's House Blend
Michelangelo Signorile, Sirius OutQ & the Gist
Markos Moulitsas, DailyKos
Andy Towle, TowleRoad
Joe Jervis, Joe My God
Bil Browning, Bilerico
Taylor Marsh, TaylorMarsh.com
Dan Savage, Slog

MOMENTUM HAS TURNED TO CONFUSION

HRC may argue that it's already told the President it would like to see DADT repealed this year. Well, that's not enough. And here's why.

We've had an amazing few weeks of momentum on DADT repeal following the mention of DADT in the State of the Union, the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing during which both the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs both stated their support for repeal, and the unexpected support we've received from former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell and former Defense Secretary and Vice President Dick Cheney.

But that momentum is quickly slipping away. After talking to people around Washington over the past two weeks, Joe and I have found a vacuum of leadership that is leading to confusion. The Hill has no idea if the President does or doesn't want them to move ahead with repeal this year. The House has already said that it's waiting for the Senate to do something. The Senate is in turmoil after the Democrats lost a single seat in January. And the DADT proposals being discussed in the Senate are focused on every possible approachexcept full repeal this year.

As we painfully learned last year during health care reform, nothing happens in Congress unless the President leads. And when the President doesn't lead, disaster is guaranteed.

Whatever HRC has been telling the White House about DADT, it clearly isn't working. In spite of the President's positive comments during the State of the Union, no one knows where President Obama stands on repealing "Don't Ask Don't Tell" this year. All the while, unnamed administration officials are telling the media that itcould be years before repeal finally happens. The White House clearly didn't get HRC's message, and as a result, we are losing this historic momentum.

WHY HRC?

Why are we focusing on HRC? Because HRC is our community's largest, best-funded gay rights organization in Washington, and they carry the most sway with the White House. In fact, HRC often boasts about their close working relationship with the White House. HRC's President, Joe Solmonese, is so close to the White House that he gave the President political cover during the uproar over the administration's brief in support of DOMA. It's time HRC, and our entire community, got something in return for everything we have done for this President, this Congress, and the entire Democratic party.

Although, I am not usually a fan of John Aravosis' tactics or language in dealing with the Obama Administration, I do agree that it is important that concrete action be taken this year which will lead to end of this mindless and discriminatory policy which falsely claims that "homosexuality is incompatible with military service." MadProfessah.com joins the blogswarm!

CALL NOW!