Welcome to the RantCrush Top 5, where we take you through the top five controversial and crazy stories in the world of law and policy each day. So who is ranting and who is raving today? Check it out below:

Gay Blood Donors Barred From Giving To Orlando Shooting Victims

Today hundreds lined up at blood banks all over Orlando in support of the injured victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting. Many do-gooders, however, will be turned away due to a ban the FDA has enforced on the gay community. Gay and bisexual men who have had sex with another man in the past 12 months are not permitted to give blood. This has outraged some in the community who simply want to support their LGBT “brothers and sisters” who were injured in the massacre. Sunday’s attack is said to be the worst mass shooting in American history, leaving forty-nine people dead and many grieving.

Blood banks in Orlando are overwhelmed by people queuing for hours. – but many gay man cannot donate blood.https://t.co/C1AA8BI61R

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) June 13, 2016

Rant Crush

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The post RantCrush Top 5: June 13, 2016 appeared first on Law Street.

On Friday night, as the throngs of terrified Parisians sprinting through the streets scrambled to find safe haven in the midst of the attacks, #PorteOuverte  (“Open Door”) erupted across Parisian Twitter and Facebook accounts. Parisians tweeted out their neighborhood, their phone numbers, which languages they speak, and the number of free beds they could spare for the night. Some even tweeted out their exact addresses, aiming to get victims off of the streets as quickly as possible (although there was a rapid shift toward using direct messages  for address information to ensure that terrorists could not track the whereabouts of those fleeing them). Messages were sent out in multiple languages, and within hours, the hashtag was being promoted internationally. Twitter users across the world promoted #PorteOuverte, encouraging friends and family in Paris to use the feed to find safety. The hashtag was also used to circulate the phone numbers of foreign embassies, so that tourists could connect to their representatives and locate friends and family in the midst of the chaos.

As the hashtag spread, Twitter users Janyk Steenbeek and Pascal Schwientek used it to create a city-wide interactive map of the homes marked as #PorteOuverte. The hashtag was quickly followed by the creation of a Twitter handle, @PortOuverteFRA, which tweeted important phone numbers and news updates during the attacks. In collaboration with the individual homeowners who opened their doors, Sikh temples functioned as temporary shelters and the infamous bookstore Shakespeare and Company sheltered approximately 20 customers during the attack. On the other side of the globe, #PorteOuverte was used by Americans in the vicinity of international airports, who offered to take in travelers bound for Paris whose flights were grounded on Friday. French citizens were encouraged to use the #strandedinUS, which connected them to Americans who volunteered to house them while the French borders remained closed. It has been said that the desperate look for any port in a storm, but it certainly helps if that port is equipped with beds, food, and comfort in the face of brutality.

On Saturday morning, Parisians returned to social media, this time using the French #dondusang and the English #donateblood to ask for blood donations for the victims of the attacks. Hundreds of Parisians left their homes (despite government advice to stay indoors) and queued in front of hospitals and donation centers for hours to donate. In fact, many donors were asked to go home and return to donate in the coming weeks–blood has a relatively short shelf life, so continual blood donations must be made over the coming weeks and months in order to meet the blood banks’ needs. The lines of Parisians waiting to give blood in a virtually empty city lent a note of optimism to the surreal photos of the city on Saturday.

#PorteOuverte is being hailed as a shining example of humanity and kindness in the midst of unthinkable violence but I would take it a step further: #PorteOuverte is one of the most impressive, albeit short-lived, protest movements of the past several years. It united people across socioeconomic and national divides, across neighborhoods and languages. It grew organically and rapidly, without formal organization or development, but it restored a basic right to the Parisian population within a matter of hours: the right to safety, to peace of mind, to breathing without fear within their own city. The murder of civilians is designed to make a populace feel weak and insecure, to throw them into a panic wherein their terror engulfs their rationality and compassion. When terror reigns, we are expected to lose our will to think and resist. We are expected to capitulate to the architects of violence. Yet, on Friday night, Parisians stood together. Those who opened their homes to strangers denied the terrorists of the satisfaction of seeing Parisians terrified and friendless in the streets. Fear feeds on intolerance and paranoia, but it cannot survive when we are sensible and selfless in moments of crisis. #PorteOuverte is a protest against the violence that tore through Paris, but it is also a protest against fear itself.

Jillian Sequeira

Jillian Sequeira was a member of the College of William and Mary Class of 2016, with a double major in Government and Italian. When she’s not blogging, she’s photographing graffiti around the world and worshiping at the altar of Elon Musk and all things Tesla. Contact Jillian at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

The post #PorteOuverte: Fighting Fear in the Heart of Paris appeared first on Law Street.

This summer, fellow Law Streeter Brittany Alzfan wrote about the National Gay Blood Drive, which was the second event of its kind and served as an attempt to draw awareness to the fact that gay men are prevented from donating blood by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA recently acted to change those restrictions, but activists worry that the change doesn’t really do much to alleviate the discrimination against gay men who want to donate blood.

The new policy allows gay men to donate blood, but only if they haven’t had sex with another man in the last 12 months. So essentially, only celibate gay men are allowed to donate–for the vast majority of adults, this changes nothing. It does the exact same thing as the lifetime ban–prevents gay men from donating–but without saying so in the same words. The FDA is basically pretending to change its policy and hoping no one notices that it’s still essentially the same discriminatory policy.

There really are numerous problems with the FDA’s policy. First of all, it reflects outdated science. Donated blood is tested for HIV regardless of who donates it. That’s smart, pragmatic science, given that HIV can be transmitted through any sort of sexual activity, regardless of the participants’ genders or sexual identities. It can also be transmitted through needle-sharing, or other manners that have absolutely nothing to do with sex. As Scott Schoettes of Lambda Legal explains:

Within 45 days of exposure, currently required blood donation testing detects all known serious blood-borne pathogens, including HIV.  Therefore, a deferral of more than two months—for anyone—is not necessary and does not noticeably enhance the safety of the blood supply.

Given that HIV tests are pretty quick and reliable–some tests can detect HIV as early as nine days after infection–this 12 month timeline seems arbitrary at best.

Moreover, the ban is insulting. When donating blood, participants are required to be honest about their medical and personal issues. Questions asked at donation locations include inquiries about travel history, whether or not the donors have gotten tattoos, and about HIV, AIDS, Malaria, and a whole host of other diseases. These are questions for everyone–regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, or sexuality. So why does the FDA believe that absolutely everyone who goes in to give blood can be trusted except for gay men? There’s only one word for that: demeaning.

Finally, the FDA ban–even the new, almost equally bad ban–might be dangerous on a larger scale. By not allowing gay men to donate, the agency is turning away potentially life-saving donations. The Williams Institute at UCLA estimates that if the ban were lifted, donations would increase dramatically. As the institute put it:

If the current MSM [men who have had sex with men] ban were completely lifted, we estimate that an additional 360,600 men would likely donate 615,300 additional pints of blood each year.

Instead of a ban, activists argue that the United States should adopt a model like the one that Italy and Spain have. Those two countries screen each person as an individual based on his or her personal risk factors. Since instituting that policy change, there has been no evidence of blood supply contamination.

It does make sense that the FDA would want to keep any HIV-infected blood samples from getting into the donation supply; however, broad discrimination based on nonsensical science and old prejudices is most certainly not the way to do so.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The FDA’s New Blood Donation Policy Still Discriminates Against Gay Men appeared first on Law Street.

On Friday, gay and bisexual men participated in the second annual National Gay Blood Drive. The drive’s goal was to call attention to the FDA’s lifetime blood donor deferral for all men who have had sex with another man, in place since 1977. Despite the national attention that it received, the first gay blood drive last summer did little to sway the FDA and the ban remained. Organizations such as the American Red Cross, America’s Blood Centers, and the American Association of Blood Banks have all spoken out in support of easing blood donor restrictions. They say that they all, “believe the current lifetime deferral for men who have had sex with other men should be modified and that donor deferral criteria should be made comparable with criteria for other behaviors that pose an increased risk for transmission of transfusion-transmitted infections.”

But let’s back up a bit here–why is there a restriction preventing gay men from donating blood in the first place? About three decades ago, when the AIDS crisis was in full swing, there was panic about how the HIV virus was transmitted. The restriction was put in place to prevent gay men from transmitting HIV through blood donations. But the times, and our scientific knowledge, have changed. We have had the ability to perform blood tests for nearly 30 years now, and it’s been nearly that long since we’ve had a single case of HIV via blood transfusion. The laws are also a relic of a time when it was thought that HIV was an exclusively homosexual disease–it’s since been proven that it can be passed on to anyone of any sexual orientation. That’s exactly why every sample is tested for many things, including HIV, after it is donated.

Ryan James Yezak, the drive’s organizer, wrote a passionate plea for lifting the ban this week on behalf of the Human Rights Campaign. He explained how three years ago, he wanted to go with his boss to give blood after a natural disaster. In his plea, he explained:

While I was healthy as could be, I could not donate due to the fact that I was gay. I had to explain the situation to everyone in my department. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was being treated differently solely on the basis of my sexual orientation – it felt alienating, it felt wrong, but above all – it felt unnecessary.

Yezak could not be more correct–it is unnecessary. A simple blood test and waiting period eliminates the need to categorize individual donors as a risk. The exclusion of gay and bisexual men from donating blood only propagates a stigma against which gay rights activists have spent the past 30 years fighting.

In fact, the only thing that this ban really does is cut down the number of potential blood donors, which is not something we should be doing. Blood shortages have been a major issue in the United States over the past several years.  According to the American Red Cross, more than 41,000 blood donations are needed every single day. In times of catastrophes and in the summer months when schools are no longer holding blood drives, there are major shortages of blood due to the lack of donors. ABC News reported that last year that the United States faced one of the worst shortages the Red Cross has ever seen. As Yezak explained, “to continue to exclude people despite the entirely reasonable arguments of the organizations that supply blood themselves is both discriminatory to them and harmful to everybody.” He said, “someone needs a blood donation every two seconds in the U.S., and you never know when that someone is going to be you.”

The bottom line is, we should not be turning away anyone’s blood. So long as it has been tested, there is no reason that everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, should be banned from donating. Hopefully the second annual National Gay Blood drive will prompt the FDA to lift this outdated and discriminatory ban.

—

Brittany Alzfan (@BrittanyAlzfan) is a student at the George Washington University majoring in Criminal Justice. She was a member of Law Street’s founding Law School Rankings team during the summer of 2014. Contact Brittany at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Matt Buck via Flickr]

Brittany Alzfan

Brittany Alzfan is a student at the George Washington University majoring in Criminal Justice. She was a member of Law Street’s founding Law School Rankings team during the summer of 2014. Contact Brittany at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The National Gay Blood Drive: A Call for Change appeared first on Law Street.