“These restrictions sprung up during the AIDS panic in an era of widespread homophobia, where pastors and pundits publicly proclaimed that HIV was a divine plague “
The fact that AIDS was a death sentence and ran rampant through the gay community had nothing to do with it though, right? Sheesh...does he remember the AIDS epidemic in the 80s? I do.
He might very well not have lived through the ‘80s. On the other hand, there also seem to be many older activists who would remember it and are putting out propaganda about it.
"This means gay males are deemed what’s called an “at-risk minority”, especially in danger of acquiring HIV, and are automatically excluded from donating blood — again, unless they’re willing to declare they’ve been celibate for a full year."
"Never mind that this waiting period is unenforceable — because, really, if there was a way to tell if someone’s done the deed in the past 12 months, we’d know by now."
Notice the theme of potentially not being truthful and going to donate blood anyway. In another story I posted here recently on this, a worker at an "LGBT center" near Orlando simply advised sexually-active gay men to go give blood and say they'd been celibate.
Those are hardly the only diseases of concern there.