Why Won't the FDA Let Me Donate Blood?
I have type O-negative blood; I am what’s called a “universal donor.” My blood is the most sought-after because no matter what type of blood you have, you can receive O-negative blood. For that reason, in the event of an emergency, first responders bring O-negative blood to the scene.

I was in New York City on 9/11, and blood banks, which were inundated by people who wanted to donate, would only accept O-negative blood.

I am a happily married man; we’ve been together for seven years, and we are monogamous and happy. We live in a row house with a porch swing and a white fence; we volunteer in our communities; we both work in the public interest.

Our nation is facing a major blood shortage, “one of the worst [shortages] that the Red Cross has seen,” according to the Red Cross.

But a blood bank won’t take my blood, because they can’t. I am a gay man, and the FDA forbids it.

I tell this to my straight friends, and they can’t believe it, but it’s true. According to the FDA:

Having had a low number of partners is known to decrease the risk of HIV infection. However … [the FDA has been unable to] reliably identify a subset of MSM (e.g., based on monogamy or safe sexual practices) who do not still have a substantially increased rate of HIV infection compared to the general population or currently accepted blood donors.

You heard that right: Despite being in a seven-year monogamous relationship, I am still, somehow, at a higher risk of contracting HIV.

Recently, an FDA advisory panel considered walking back that prohibition by proposing a rule that would have allowed gay men to donate blood if they abstained from sex for one year. By their logic, if I stopped sleeping with my husband for 365 days, my risk for HIV would be magically reduced and I would be allowed me to donate blood.

The lack of logic, on its face, is mind-boggling, especially when you consider that both the American Red Cross and the American Medical Association have said that the ban is scientifically outdated and unnecessary.

But this is far more than just a policy relic that is caught in the slow churn of bureaucratic regulatory reform. No, this is of course another in a litany of double standards that the LGBT community faces.

Heterosexuals (regardless of their character) can serve in the military, but the LGBT community had to fight for our right to fight (and die) for our country. Heterosexuals (regardless of their character) can marry (and divorce) in all 50 states; the LGBT community has had to push — state by state, one by one — for our right to commit to the person we love. Heterosexuals (regardless of their character) can adopt; same-sex couples can jointly petition to adopt statewide in only 23 states and D.C.

On 9/11, after the towers fell to ash, I approached Second Avenue, headed toward the New York Blood Center. There were no cars on the streets, just thousands of people making a slow exodus north to their homes. The line to give blood was three blocks long.

Standing on the corner of 67th Street, I faced one of the most acute moral quandaries I’ve yet to confront: Do I lie about my identity to help my fellow brothers and sisters, or do I stay true to myself and know that the Red Cross would, by law, dispose of my blood?

* * *

The FDA recently rejected the Advisory Panel’s one-year-abstinence recommendation and elected to keep the permanent ban in place.

One of the doctors who voted for the ongoing ban clearly found the debate to be an irritant; she was quoted complaining that “[i]t sounds to me like we’re talking about policy and civil rights….”

Damn right. And no policy should force me to lie so I can give back.

www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-penchina/why-wont-the-fda-let-me-donate-blood_b_6355260.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Supreme Court Rebuffs Florida — Marriages to Begin

It’s more bad news for antigay Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, as the nation’s highest court rejects her request to delay marriage equality in the Sunshine State after January 6.

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Matt Baume

www.advocate.com/politics/marriage-equality/2014/12/19/supreme-court-rebuffs-florida-marriages-begin

The Top 10 Bestselling Gay Sex Books of 2014

As a sex-advice columnist, I like to keep up with the latest books on gay sex. Given how obsessed gay men are with the subject, you’d think this category would be producing more titles than an automatic profile generator on Grindr, but it isn’t. If you look at my list of the top 10 most popular gay-sex books on Amazon, you’ll see that only one of the books was published in 2014. The rest go as far back as 1998! Take a look:

1. How to Bottom Like a Porn Star*
Published: 2014
Amazon ranking: 35,000

2. How to Bottom Without Pain or Stains
Published: 2013
Amazon ranking: 44,000

3. The Joy of Gay Sex
Published: 2006
Amazon ranking: 80,000

4. Anal Health and Pleasure
Published: 2011
Amazon ranking: 149,000

5. How to Ejaculate More and Shoot Further
Published: 2013
Amazon ranking: 160,000

(Click here to see the rest of the list.)

Want to know what “Amazon ranking” means and how it translates to the number of books sold per day? Click here. You’ll be able to look at any book on Amazon and estimate how many have been sold (a neat trick to impress your writer friends!).

Why would there be so few gay-sex-advice books on the market? Gay men are at least as interested in sex as straight men, yet there are far more sex guides for them than there are for us.

We Know More Than They Do

Clearly, one of the main reasons has to do with innate knowledge. When it comes to relating, men are from Mars and women are from Venus. But when it comes to sex, men are from Pluto and women are from Narnia. Their sexual plumbing couldn’t be any more different, and because of that, men’s ignorance could not be starker. That opens up (pun intended) a huge market to fill the void.

But that isn’t necessarily true for gay men. Our plumbing works exactly the same way. You say “tomato” and I say “tomatoh,” but we’re still talking about the same vegetable (or fruit, depending on your politics or your botanical background). We don’t need to be told to do this or that for him, because we’re doing it for ourselves. It doesn’t take much to understand that he’s probably going to like what we do.

Still, gay men are men, and as the old Polish saying goes, “If there are tires or testicles, there will be trouble,” meaning male ignorance knows no bounds and pride enforces silence. Many of the letters I get to my sex-advice column are astoundingly ignorant. One good book out of our top-10 list would’ve stopped them from being written.

Just because your sexual plumbing is nearly identical to your partner doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be good at sex, though. Raise your hand if you’ve ever gone home with a guy who was so bad at sex that the Peeping Tom put down the binoculars. Now keep those hands up. The odds are some guys were thinking about you when they raised their hands. The truth is that being good in bed is a learned behavior. Few of us are born knowing what to do and how to do it.

And that’s why we buy gay-sex-advice books — because some of us, and I include myself, know what we don’t know and like the idea of constantly improving our ability to experience and deliver pleasure.

There’s Just Not Enough of Us

But there’s another reason that gay-sex books don’t sell well, and it’s the same reason that most gay books — fiction or nonfiction — don’t do well: Gay men don’t buy gay books. Raise your hand if you bought any kind of gay book in the last year. Keep them raised if you bought two or more.

I assure you that the pitiful number of hands that went up had nothing to do with worries about underarm stains. There are hardly any gay bookstores left in America, but you would be wrong if you thought that the only thing that decimated them was Amazon and the rise of digital books. Gay bookstores had always struggled even before the dawn of the digital age. When you combine how few of us there are (what, 6 percent of the population?) with how little interest we have in gay subject matter (other than porn), you have a recipe for what’s happened: gay book stores nearing extinction, and, with the exception of Kensington Books, no profitable gay publishing houses.

Still, the need is there, and gay books will never go away. If you haven’t bought one in a while, pick one out of Amazon’s list of the top 100 gay and lesbian bestsellers. It’d make a great holiday gift for you or someone you love.

*I authored this book under a pseudonym.

www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-alvear/the-top-10-bestselling-gay-sex-books-of-2014_b_6347882.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Lesbian Basketballers Sue Pepperdine for Discrimination

Two women say their coach and others harassed them and wanted them off the team at the Christian university.

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Annie Hollenbeck

www.advocate.com/sports/2014/12/19/lesbian-basketballers-sue-pepperdine-discrimination