Free Republic

The Food and Drug Administration announced on Tuesday that it would scrap a decades-old lifetime prohibition on blood donation by gay and bisexual men, a change that experts said was long overdue and could lift the annual blood supply by as much as 4 percent. The F.D.A. enacted the ban in 1983, early in the AIDS epidemic. At the time, little was known about the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes the disease, and there was no quick test to determine whether somebody had it. But science — and the understanding of H.I.V. in particular — has advanced in the intervening...

Toddler Was Denied Shower Access as Well: A couple says their vacation was ruined when an RV park owner told them they weren't welcome after discovering their 2-year-old foster son had the HIV virus. Last week, Dick and Silvia Glover went to the Wales West RV Park in Silver Hill, Ala., with their foster son Caleb. When the boy was banned from using the pool and showers, the Glovers said they were offered an uncomfortable and painful choice: They could either keep Caleb out of the water or leave.

SAN FRANCISCO: Gay and lesbian prisoners in California will be allowed overnight visits with their partners under a new prison policy, believed to be the first time a U.S. state has allowed same-sex conjugal stays. The policy comes more than two years after a 2003 California law provided equal rights for registered domestic partners in the state, including those of the same sex and nonmarried heterosexuals. Gay and civil rights groups had threatened to sue to permit the conjugal visits in prisons. "It's a little troubling that a state agency had to be threatened with legal action to obey state...

ATLANTA - At the world's busiest airport, plainclothes officers patrolling public restrooms in search of luggage thieves have instead uncovered a rash of other, more sordid crimes. The new restroom dragnet has led to the arrests of more than 30 people in three months for indecent exposure and public sex acts at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Airport restrooms apparently have become such popular meeting places for men looking for sexual trysts with other men that they have been suggested several times as meeting places in personal ads on the Web site Craigslist. "Hey ... I'm stuck at the airport from...

...With the sidewalks jammed, I scooped my little guy and held him in my arms and we watched the passing carnival - muscle boys in tiny swimsuits, transvestites on roller skates, gay celebrities sitting on the back of open convertibles. My young son's eyes goggled in alarm. "Daddy," he said, pointing, "those men ... they're not wearing seat belts. It isn't safe." He was so upset that the only way to settle him down was to go to a cop, grimly holding back the crowd, and inform him of the infraction. He looked at me as if I was insane....