A friend of Jeff Bennett's slid into her seat in a classroom during graduate school. She had just passed by a campus blood drive, where fellow students were rolling up their sleeves to save lives.
"There's a blood drive today," she remarked. Then, sarcastically: "You should donate."
"Oh right, with my fear of needles?" Bennett said, laughing.
"No … didn't you know that you can't give blood?" she said. "Because you're gay."
It was 2001, and like many gay men, Bennett was unaware of a federal policy established during the AIDS scare two decades earlier that prohibits him, for life, from giving blood. Now a scholar at the University of Iowa, he studies how the rule remains in place today – despite major advances in screening procedures for HIV – and the ways in which gay men resist it.
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Complete article at Newswise : http://bit.ly/mZcgXU
