2 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE Pride Guide 2010

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Iceland votes to allow full marriage

by Anthony Glassman

Reykjavik, Iceland-The island of Iceland is now the ninth country in the world with full same-sex marriage.

The nation's parliament voted unanimously on June 11 to change marriage laws to explicitly include same-sex marriage. While most legal changes allowing gay nuptials simply remove the gender of the people involved, Iceland's law, according to Reuters news agency, adds "man and man, woman and woman" to the law.

The country, whose population numbers

just over 300,000, made history last year as the first nation with an openly gay head of state after the election of Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir.

Sigurdardottir's sexual orientation was an almost complete non-issue in Iceland, with foreign journalists paying far more attention to her lesbianism than people in her country.

The National Church of Iceland, to which three-quarters of the population belongs, has yet to decide whether or not to allow same-sex marriages in its churches. However, the church allows ministers to perform

such weddings if they wish.

Iceland joins fellow European nations Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands in allowing full samesex marriage.

South Africa and Canada also allow full same-sex marriage nationwide.

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Interestingly, after 300 years as an independent nation, Iceland was part of Norway from 1262 until it was ceded to Denmark in 1814. It regained full independence at the end of World War II. Denmark has a parallel institution to marriage called "registered partnerships."

No surgery rule for passport gender change

by Anthony Glassman

Washington, D.C.-The Obama administration's State Department gave transgender Americans a special Pride month gift, easing requirements for changing gender on passports.

The policy was announced on June 9, and took effect the next day.

In the past, transgender people had to provide documents proving that they had undergone gender reassignment surgery.

Under the new rules, all that is needed is a doctor's certification that the person has undergone gender transition treatment.

Passports for limited use will also be available to people in the process of transitioning...

The policy also affects the alteration of Consular Reports of Birth Abroad, the

equivalent of birth certificates for Americans who were born while their parents were in foreign countries.

The policy change also says that if the appropriate documents are provided, passport officials are forbidden from asking for additional medical information. It also requires officials to refer to the applicant using the appropriate pronoun.

"We want to extend our thanks to the Obama administration, and particularly to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for understanding the need for this change and then responding to make travel safer for transgender people," said National Center for Transgender Equality executive director Mara Keisling. "This shows how changes in government policy directly impact people's lives, in this case, for the better.” National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

executive director Rea Carey echoed her comments.

"By issuing this policy change, the State Department has recognized that transgender people need to be able to travel and live with identity documents that accurately reflect who they are. The old policy regularly put transgender people at increased risk for harassment and violence," she said. "This update will go a long way to rectify this problem."

"We are absolutely thrilled about this change," said Kristina Wertz, legal director of the Transgender Law Center. "The new policy is the first at the federal level to reflect a fuller understanding of the realities of transgender lives by recognizing that gender identity is not dependent upon anatomy or the ability to access expensive medical treatment."

FDA keeps ban on gay men's blood donations

But one member says the rule will eventually be dropped

by Eric Resnick

Washington, D.C.-An Ohio heart surgeon says the 33-year-old ban on blood donations by men who have sex with men will disappear eventually, and that advocates for change "need to keep chipping away at it."

Dr. John Arnold of Columbus was one of six votes on the Health and Human Services Department's Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability in favor of a recommendation that the Food and Drug Administration lift the ban now.

Nine members voted against the resolution. "The resistance to change now was due to gaps in knowledge," not opposition to collecting blood from men who have sex with men," said Arnold, who spoke as an individual, not for the committee.

Arnold also believes the issue will not be going away.

The ban was established in 1983 and covers all men who have had sex with a man, even once, since 1977. The purpose was to keep HIV out of the blood supply prior to reliable detection tests. What is now known as HIV was discovered in the U.S. in 1981. At that time, it appeared primarily in gay men and intravenous drug users.

Since, other high risk groups, including African-American women, have emerged, though there is no categorical ban on their donating blood. At the same time, regulations have been

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put in place ensuring that all blood is screened for HIV, and the tests have evolved to detect the virus within a few days of infection.

The committee met June 10-11 to hear testimony and consider the evidence, largely at the request of Democratic senators who sent a letter to Food and Drug Administration commissioner Margaret Hamburg in March urging a change in the regulation.

The letter was spearheaded by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown joined the effort.

Arnold said Kerry's office provided most of the educational material used to brief the committee prior to the meeting.

Arnold was appointed to the committee by Bush administration Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt, and serves there until 2013.

Arnold says he was asked to serve because he treats lots of patients who are “high-end users” of blood and blood products, which he described as "highly organized, most vocal and visible" opponents of lifting the ban.

These users include people with hemophilia and other chronic conditions that require large amounts of blood over a lifetime.

Arnold, who describes himself as coming from no political agenda, said he was unaware that the ban existed before he prepared for the meeting.

Arnold said the advocates for high-end blood

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users oppose any changes to regulations "that are not clean-cut beneficial" or that might add risk, no matter how small.

"They oppose anything gray, anything with any controversy, anything not guaranteed to reduce the risk," Arnold said.

"The risk of changing this policy is not zero,' said Arnold, “but the policy doesn't make a lot of sense, especially given other things we tolerate in the blood pool."

The blood industry has favored lifting the ban since the largest supplier, the Red Cross, officially reversed its position in 2006.

The committee heard from experts and members of the public representing aspects of the issue ranging from medical ethics, blood consumers, HIV experts, and public health policy experts.

Arnold said he was especially impressed with the presentation by Nathan Schaefer and Sean Cahill of the Gay Men's Health Crisis.

The committee also heard about the condition of the blood supply in European countries, some of which have deferrals for gay men based on behavior, but no bans.

Most observers believe the United States will move closer to that system eventually.

There has been some pontification, largely in the blogosphere, that the committee members may have been confused about what a vote for the recommendation would really mean.

This is probably because there were a number of modifications to the language of it during discussion, and because the committee later voted 14-0 that the ban is "suboptimal in permitting some high risk donations while preventing some low risk donations."

Since that seems to be agreement with the position of those who want the ban lifted, some see the earlier vote as inconsistent.

Arnold disagrees, saying that in his opinion, Dr. Jerry Holmberg, who chaired the meeting, was very careful to make sure that all members understood what they were voting for.

Arnold believes that the difference is that the failed recommendation called for the regulation to change immediately, and that some members who agree with the change also want more evidence to be examined.

"The sense of the committee is that the regulation should change," Amold said, adding that the lack of consensus is around the steps to getting there.

Arnold said the meeting's biggest success was that the steps toward the fix were defined, and the questions got asked.

The entire proceeding is on the web at www.hhs.gov.

GAY PEOPLE'S

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Pride Guide June 18, 2010

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