Liberal caucus staff speak out against blood drives’ LGBTQ restrictions

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This article was published 23/05/2019 (1793 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Staff members in the Manitoba Liberal caucus are speaking out against the Manitoba legislature’s practice of hosting blood drives, saying it discriminates against members of the LGBTQ community who work in the building.

Canadian Blood Services doesn’t accept donations from gay men who have been sexually active with men in the previous three months, or transgender women who have been sexually active with men in the past year.

Craig Larkins, director of communications for the Manitoba Liberals, said the practice is archaic.

“I would love to donate, honestly. Everyone in this office (would). There’s three gay men in the office and the conversation came up of, ‘Imagine if the whole office walked up to that bus and three of us couldn’t get on?’ It’s not a nice feeling at the end of the day,” said Larkins, who identifies as gay.

He last raised concerns about the Give Life bus picking up legislative employees in November. The bus visited the legislature again this week and has three more planned stops this year.

Larkins said government staff he spoke to in 2018 weren’t aware of CBS’s donation rules. They subsequently sent him information about why the agency continues limiting donations for gay men as a health precaution.

“Anytime this conversation does come up with them — I’ve had it a couple times — they just send me the science behind it all. And it’s stigma over science essentially, in my eyes,” Larkins said.

On its website, CBS has a timeline of when it began excluding donations from men who have sex with men starting in the mid-1980s up until earlier this month, when Health Canada approved wait times of three months for gay men who are abstinent and want to donate.

Shandi Strong, a constituency assistant for Liberal MLA Jon Gerrard, and said she won’t be donating blood until all of her LGBTQ friends can also donate, no strings attached.

“When I see those signs here at the legislature, I go, ‘Yeah, I should do that. Oh but wait, my friends and co-workers, my community cannot.’ So I’m standing with them in solidarity,” she said.

“Pointing your finger at the LGBT community is the wrong way to go about it,” Strong said of CBS’s donation policies. “Let’s have these people who want to give blood have the ability to give blood and treat them just like everybody else.”

The Free Press has asked the government for comment on the Manitoba Liberals’ concerns.

Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont wrote to Speaker Myrna Driedger earlier this week asking the legislative assembly to stop holding blood drives. His request was redirected to the Clerk of the Executive Council.

jessica.botelho@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @_jessbu