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May 27, 2008

Russia Repeals Gay Blood Ban

Russia repealed its six-year ban on gay blood donors after a tumultuous battle between gay activist groups and the Russian Minister of Health and Social Development. Tatyana Golikova, the minister of the department, signed the decree on April 16, but members of the media were not informed until Thursday night, according to the U.K. Gay News.

Activists have been campaigning against the ban since April 2006, when they sent a letter to the ministry of health and social development asking for a repeal of the ban because it was unconstitutional. In September 2007, activists attempted to picket the ministry's office in Moscow, but the Prefecture of the Central Administrative Area of Moscow banned the demonstration for security reasons, according to the article.

In 1993 consensual gay sex was legalized, and Russia's authority on psychology decided in 1999 that homosexuality was not a classified as a mental illness.

“Russian legislation finally got rid of the last direct discriminatory provision against homosexual people," Russian LGBT activist Nikolai Alekseev told reporters in Brazil. "Now we are going to ask for positive actions of the authorities in order to directly ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in Russia law as well as criminal prosecution for hate speeches and aggressive homophobia.” (The Advocate)

Reader Comments

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  • Name: Bill Stella
    Date posted: 2008-05-26 2:17 AM
    Hometown: Somerville, NJ

    Comment:

    So does this means Russia (RUSSIA!) has a better policy than the US re blood donations by Gay men? In my (and others') experience, blood drives don't screen you at the door if you're Gay, but if you admit that you're a man that has had sex with men on the intake form, that is, if you don't lie, they will (how to put it?) discourage you from basically wasting their time, because they'll automatically segregate your blood so it's never used for transfusions. In the US, men having sex with men equates with having unsuitable blood, period. No matter what's on a donor's intake form, every donation by any donor is tested for HIV (among other things), so it's just discriminatory laziness and a lack of political will that permits this, yet another wasteful policy devaluing gay men, to continue. I'm surprised no one else has commented on this previously unimaginable gap between US and Russian equal civil protections. Or not, considering how underprioritized fixing this inequality has been.


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