It was the gloomiest Sunday for America when more than 50 people were killed with 50 injured as a 29-year-old man, Omar Mateen, open fired at a gay club in Orlando, Florida.
While coping with the loss of their loved ones, people of the LGBT received yet another setback when they were not allowed to donate blood to the injured.
Such regulations against gay men donating blood came into existence in 1983 as a measure to minimize the epidemic of HIV/AIDS. The FDA had only limited means of screening contaminated blood back in those days but with the advent of modern technology, such a ban had been criticized by many as not only archaic but quite discriminatory.
In 2013, the American Medical Association had called for a lift on the ban and in 2015, the FDA had also relaxed the law but failed to ban it completely.
The revised policy stated that any man who has had sex with another man in the past year would be prohibited to donate blood.
The regulation on gay and bisexual men on donating blood has set a furor over social media with people expressing their opinion against the discrimination quite vehemently.
The FDA should overturn this legislation based solely on homophobic rhetoric. Gay men should be allowed to donate blood. #Orlando
— Joshua Crasch-Kolberg (@JoshKolberg) June 12, 2016
Gay and bisexual men are legally banned from donating blood in Orlando as dozens of their peers sit wounded in a hospital in need of it.
— Chelsea Farrington (@ChelsFarrington) June 12, 2016
Orlando Hospitals need blood donations to help save gay people.
Yet gay people can't give blood to help their own. Because they're gay.
— Bobby Blanchard (@bobbycblanchard) June 12, 2016
https://twitter.com/chescaleigh/status/742027947192815616
It is illegal for gay men to donate blood. It is legal for anyone to buy the AR-15 assault rifle that spilled the blood of gay men today.
— spencer claus ACAB (@spxncxrx) June 12, 2016