Blood donation in Australia

After years of being banned, the Australian Red Cross is finally considering reviewing its ban on males who have had sex with males in the past 12 months (i.e essentially all sexually active gay men and many bi and pansexual men). Apparently, the statistically higher occurence of diseases such as HIV among gay men (i am too lazy to actually search for statistics or a statistical analysis about the significance of whatever statistics may exist, so i will take the Red Cross' word) makes them high risk donors. This is nonsense. Risk assessment should be based on muliple factors (as it is typically done) across a range of critereon. Risk factor for sexually transmitted diseases should be based on the sexual practices of the person, rather than the sexual preferences. A promiscous person with lax protective practices will be of a higher risk than a person who only practices safe sex with one partner. This is regardless of who the person is, female, male, gay, straight or other. That we have gone for so long with such a discriminatory policy is disgraceful. The sooner we can rectify this situation and assess each person as an individual, the better.
JC

Gay Marriage

Today's topic is a controversial one, but it is one close to my heart. At the centre of the gay marriage controversy, both here in Australia and overseas in places like the US, is the rights and freedoms of each individual in society. On one side we have those who want everyone to have the right to marry the person of their choosing. On the other we have those who see marriage as being only between a man and a woman, for reasons varying between tradition, religion, family and many others. In between these two views are an endless variety of others. I'm going to lay it out there, i have a vested interest in this debate. I am a bisexual woman. This means that there is the distinct possibility that i could fall in love and wish to marry another woman. So in this entry, i am essentially just presenting my own viewpoint on this topic. This is not a discussion in the sense that both sides are given attention to, instead is a discussion of major issues from my point of view. Also, please note that this article will reference the US for the most part as there is a large volume of readily avaliable information from that region. Currently there is only a few states in the US that perform (CT, DC, IA, MA, NH, VT and the Coquille tribe in OR) or recognise (CA, MD, NY, RI) gay marriages. Several others recognise legal partnerships/civil unions which are similar but carry less weight than marriage (CA, CO, HI, ME, NJ, NV, OR, WA, WI). The rest? Sorry, legally gay partnerships arent even recognised. This seems ridiculous, imagine the fury if this was interracial marriage we were discussing. Not so long ago it was. Why did people disagree with interracial marriage - mostly because it disagreed with what they considered normal/mainstream or morally correct. Eventually, the supreme court ruled that restricting marriages between two consenting adults went against the constitution. So why are the rights of adults constantly put to the vote? Nowhere should there be the majority voting on the rights of anybody, especially the minorities. California put the rights of gay people to choose their own marriage partner to the vote. Common arguements for those who vote against gay marriage include immorality, against God, marriage should be between a man and a woman and we shouldnt be encouraging kids to be gay. None of these are valid reasons constitionally as they are all opinions. Opinions that destroy the freedoms of others. Seperation of church and state. Its the law in america yet more and more often we see the lines between the two being blurred. It's hard to avoid making a slippery slope argument about what could be next. But for now, we need to work hard to uphold the rights and freedoms of all americans and all people, gay or otherwise.

Further Reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage
www.australianmarriageequality.com/ for the aussies out there :)
www.actnow.com.au/Issues/Samesex_marriage.aspx
www.marriageequality.org/ - for the 'mericans out there