Posted on 06/28/2015 5:48:20 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
(CNSNews.com) -- The American University Museum in Washington, D.C. will host an art exhibition this fall that protests the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) current ban on blood donations from men who have had sex with other men (MSM).
The museum says the exhibit, entitled “Blood Mirror", will feature a “powerful sculpture created from the blood of 9 gay men."
Viewers of the sculpture will be able to see themselves reflected on the surface of the encased blood.
Gay artist Jordan Eagles said in a press release that he preserved the blood within a seven-foot-tall monolith to show “that this blood could have been used to save lives.”
The American University Museum told CNSNews.com that Eagles was not paid for the sculpture, and that government monies are not funding the upcoming exhibit.
Volunteer blood donors for the sculpture include an 88-year-old gay priest, a transgender male couple, an Army captain discharged from service under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” an identical gay twin, a bisexual father, and three gay rights activists.
“Each man is currently ineligible to donate blood under the FDA's current policy -- but since they cannot donate their blood to save lives, they've chosen to donate their blood for art,” the press release states.
"This discriminatory policy is part of our gay history and part of our nation's history, and the sculpture asks us to reflect on discrimination in our country, as well as the homophobia that exists around the world,” Eagles continued.
The exhibit will also include a short film by Leo Herrera, who said the sculpture “represents homophobia so deep that it infected science itself and spawned a fear of our most precious fluids.”
The FDA’s policy banning blood donations from sexually active gay men was established at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in 1983 “and is not based on any judgment concerning the donor's sexual orientation,” the FDA states.
Rather, men who have had sex with men are prevented from donating blood because of their increased risk of HIV, Hepatitis B, and other infections which can be transmitted through blood transfusion, the agency explains.
“Current scientific data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate that, as a group, men who have sex with other men are at a higher risk for transmitting infectious diseases or HIV than are individuals in other risk categories.”
On May 13, the FDA proposed a new policy that would allow men who have abstained from sex with other men for 12 months to donate blood.
“In 2010, male-to-male sexual contact accounted for 63% of newly diagnosed HIV infections among adults, and 78% of newly diagnosed HIV infections in men, indicating that male-to-male sexual contact remains associated with high risk of HIV exposure,” the FDA noted.
The agency added that “sufficient data are not available to assess the effectiveness of selecting MSM with low HIV risk based on deferral times of less than one year since last exposure…
“Additionally, the available epidemiologic data in the published literature do not support the concept that MSM who report mutual monogamy with a partner or who report routine use of safe sex practices are at low risk for HIV.”
However, since no such celibacy restrictions exist for heterosexual donors, Eagles and Herrera called it an “equally flawed proposed revision.”
According to the press release, issued during the public comment period for the new FDA proposal, “the sculpture will inspire dialogue about the FDA’s discriminatory policy.”
“The FDA is taking a bold step. There’s been a discriminatory policy in place and a change is, in fact, happening. It’s historic, but it doesn’t do enough, and it’s not actually fair. How many gay men do I know that are actually going to be celibate for 12 months? Gay men that I know that are married, that are monogamous with each other?” said Eagles in Herrera’s film.
“What actually seemed like something that was a step in the right direction -- [I] sat with it for a while and actually felt like this was even worse. Here we are in 2015 and we have all this medicine and science at our disposal, and this is the best that they could do?”
Eagles said his work “will never be finished until the FDA’s blood donation policy is fair for all people.”
These sorts of decisions should be medical, not political. Of course that does not stop the deviant selfish left.
Kill a kid to help a homo, it’s the liberal way.
THAT IS NOT ART, IT IS A BIOHAZARD.
Yep, nothing will get me to step up and support promiscuous gay men donating blood like a sculpture that might have come straight from an abattoir.
DANG!
There are no words for the amount of fail embodied by this “art”.
I should have a pile of manure and composted table scraps delivered to the museum with some droning screed about corporations and such just to see if they display it and praise it.
The perverts are insisting that healthy people treat them as normal. I know how I would react if my wife or one of my children died because of AIDS. Is pretending they are not disease ridden important enough for the perverts to take the risk of killing an innocent person and facing the resulting backlash?
Planned Parent counsels young people with HIV that they have a right to sleep around without telling their partners they have it.
90+ percent of all AIDS and 75% percent of syphilis is in the male gay community.... And Gays want to protest on this issue risking this data on their bloodlines going viral, so to speak?
We should have the right to know what goes into our bodies!
Denial that Gender Derangement Disorder is a mental illness is a mental illness.
You not only have to let gays co-opt the 2 thousand year old institution of male/female marriage, you have to take their filthy, disease-ridden hemoglobin into your bodies.
They believe they have every right to spread AIDS
I said this would be one of the next fronts in the post-Supreme Court news.
Also dropping the prosecution of those who have anonymous sex in public restrooms. It “unfairly targets the homosexual community”.
Coproations, perhaps?
Actually, they do. They believe it is unfair that homosexuals are the great majority of inflictees and want to even the score against hetero-privilege.
Lol, yeah.
Fill the screed full of my signature typos.
Wonder if it could really be pulled off?
In theory that is true. I suppose it is also true that when you need a blood transfusion you may not always be able to choose. You should be able to trust that the blood supply is as SAFE as absolutely possible and that there is no political compromises made with it.
Hold your breath till you turn blue. I am sure that it worked very well for you as a little boy.
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