From Brazil and Hungary, there are improvements for the queer community to report: The ban on blood donation for MSM has now been lifted in two countries ruled by anti-queer presidents.

Brazil was first …

There is no mistaking: Bolsonaro is still as homophobic as before. He had nothing to do with the landmark decision in Brazil. The country’s Supreme Court, the Supremo Tribunal Federal, ruled on Sunday by a majority of seven to four votes that the ban on MSM to give blood is unconstitutional.

The battle in court lasted four years. The ban had previously stipulated that MSM must abstain for 12 months before they are allowed to donate blood. Such a regulation has also been in place in Germany since 2017. According to Edson Fachin, one of the judges of the Supremo Tribunal Federal, such a ban would not only violate the country’s constitution, but also the human dignity of bisexual and gay men.

In his statement of sentence, Fachin said:

“Instead of allowing these people to promote good through blood donations, the state unduly restricts solidarity based on prejudice and discrimination”.

Hungary followed shortly afterwards

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has also already made a name for himself as a queer-phobic and brought the country into disrepute. He used the Corona crisis e.g. to remove state recognition for transsexuals, thus practically robbing them of their existence (we reported). With retroactive effect from January 1, a law is now in effect that allows men who have sex with men to donate blood – as long as they do not engage in risky sexual behaviour.

Háttér, Hungary’s largest queer organisation, welcomed the change in the law. Now discrimination based on the gender of a sexual partner is finally history. After all, a monogamous relationship between two men is not riskier than a monogamous heterosexual relationship, the organisation said.

Hungary and Brazil thus have more progressive laws than Germany – while in more and more countries sexual risky behaviour is considered the standard regardless of sexual orientation, even MSM living monogamously are still forbidden to donate blood there. A bill to change that was rejected in the Bundestag today. There is only little progress: As part of the final vote on the “Second Law for the Protection of the Population in the Event of an Epidemic Situation of National Significance”, the Bundestag also passed an amendment to the Transfusion Law on Thursday morning. The current blood donation restrictions will a topic to be discussed regularly in the near future.

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