"Protest challenges ban on blood donations by gay men" by Sanjena Sathian | Globe Correspondent, July 13, 2013
There were no rainbow flags flying, no posters demanding equality, no kiss-ins, no marches through the streets to the sounds of Lady Gaga. In the aftermath of the gay rights movement’s biggest victory so far came a quieter protest over a smaller issue: the ability to donate blood.
On Friday, gay men in 53 cities across the country lined up outside Red Cross centers to give blood, and to get turned away, intentionally. Since 1983, the Food and Drug Administration has banned gay and bisexual men from donating, a policy activists and, on June 18, the American Medical Association, say is discriminatory and reflects outdated medical assumptions.
In Boston, 21 men arrived at the Red Cross donor center on Tremont Street Friday afternoon, got tested for HIV, and brought their results, all negative, with them to try to donate. When they were turned away, they all left quietly, thanking Red Cross screeners politely.
“It isn’t really a sexy LGBT issue,” said Ryan Yezak, a 26-year-old Los Angeles filmmaker who organized the demonstration just weeks after the Supreme Court invalidated the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Yezak will count the number of gay men turned away Friday and send the men’s negative HIV tests to the FDA to ask for a change in the policy.
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But for Yezak, the ban recalls rhetoric that called homosexuality a disease and society’s disgusted reaction to gay men during the early years of the AIDS crisis....
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