simply wasn’t done by any previous government. 'This should have been done 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose Liberal party has been promising to end the blood ban since 2015, called Thursday 'a good day' and the blanket ban 'discriminatory.' Helen Kennedy, executive director of the LGBTQ advocacy group Egale Canada, welcomed the decision and the end to a 'discriminatory' policy. We'll just say we are in love and that will be all that matters.' 10. 'One day we won't have to 'come out of the closet.'. But advocates and medical experts argued this was an outdated and stigmatizing assumption that did not reflect current risk factors. The LGBT community has made great strides in the fight for gay rights. 'Love is too beautiful to be hidden in the closet.' 9. The prior rationale for the bans was that men who have sex with men had higher prevalence of the human immunodeficiency virus. The government gradually whittled down the required abstinence periods to five years, three years, and - starting in 2019 - three months. This follows an evolution of policy from a lifetime ban on blood donations, imposed in the mid-1980s, from men who had engaged in sex with men since 1977. 'Today's authorization is a significant milestone toward a more inclusive blood donation system nationwide, and builds on progress in scientific evidence made in recent years,' Health Canada said in a statement. The change is expected to take effect by Sept.
