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Switzerland lifts ban on gay men giving blood

From July 1st it will no longer be forbidden for men who have had sex with men to give blood – provided they have been celibate for the past 12 months.

Published: 31 January 2017 09:47 CET

Switzerland lifts ban on gay men giving blood

File photo: AFP

Medical watchdog Swissmedic has approved the request, lodged by blood donor service Swiss Transfusion SRC last June, reported news agencies on Tuesday.

Currently, all men in Switzerland who have had sex with another man since 1977 are barred from donating blood – a rule brought in during the 1980s to stop the spread of Aids.

However, medical groups have argued that the presence of new diagnostic tools that can detect HIV/Aids in a matter of days now make a total ban unnecessary.

Under the new Swiss rules, men who have had sex with other men will be allowed to give blood provided they have been celibate in the previous 12 months.

Swiss Transfusion SRC welcomed the move but said it was “far from perfect” since it still excluded many gay people from giving blood.

A second step would be to assess people based on sexual behaviour rather than sexual orientation, said the organization’s director Rudolf Schwabe.

Switzerland’s stance comes in the wake of a similar relaxing of rules in countries including the US, France and Japan.

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Germany to compensate gay soldiers who faced discrimination

A German flag is sewed to the uniform of a Bundeswehr soldier in Dresden. Photo: DPA

Under the proposed law, which needs to be approved by parliament, soldiers
who were convicted by military courts for being gay, demoted or who otherwise
saw their careers damaged because of their sexual orientation, would receive a
“symbolic amount” of €3,000.

“We cannot erase the suffering inflicted upon these people,” Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer told the RND newspaper group. “But we want
to send a signal” and “turn the page on a dark chapter in the history of the
armed forces”, she said.

The compensation would apply to soldiers from the Bundeswehr, which was
created in West Germany in 1955, and to troops from former East Germany's
National People's Army, founded in 1956.

READ ALSO: More Germans identify as LGBT than in rest of Europe

The defence ministry estimates that about 1,000 people would be eligible
for a payout.

Military court judgments against soldiers for engaging in consensual gay sex acts would also be quashed under the draft bill.

It took until 1969 for homosexuality to be decriminalised in West Germany, but discrimination against gay service people continued for much longer, including after Germany was reunified in 1990.

Gay soldiers could expect to be overlooked for promotions or removed from positions of responsibility, with senior officers often deeming them a “security risk” or a bad example to others.

That ended with a law change in 2000 that officially protected gay, lesbian
and bisexual people from discrimination in the armed forces.

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