UWO Students & Community Groups March On Health Canada

London / January 17, 2008 – A group of queer students and their supporters marched on Health Canada’s London offices earlier today, demanding that a new policy around organ donation be immediately repealed based on both its homophobic nature and the increased deaths it will cause due to the rejection of otherwise healthy organs.

Members of Standing Against Queer Discrimination (SAQD), as well as supporters from Students Opposed to Hatred On Campus (SOHOC), the UWO Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), and members of campus NDP and Liberal groups gathered in downtown London today carrying signs and banners demanding that the recent policy, implemented without consultation and in secret, be replaced with one based on, as the group argued “Science – not stereotypes”. Marching through downtown, the protesters argued that the time had come to stand against homophobia, and that the policy was unjustified – calling instead for a policy based on “risky behaviours, not risky people”.

 Students were protesting a new policy on organ donation which came into effect in December of 2007, a policy which bans all men who have sex with a man in the last 5 years from donating their organs, regardless of whether HIV tests come back negative. Despite the fact that the so-called ‘window period’ – the time in which an individual could be infected and yet test negative – is no more than 6 months, this recent policy change extends the ban on all gay men to 5 years, a sharp contrast to the 6-month ban imposed on heterosexuals.

Remarks given at the protest argued that discrimination based on race or gender would never be tolerated, yet the policy the government had implemented was simply the same form of discrimination targeted at the queer population. Protesters argued that given the changing landscape of HIV infections, a situation in which women aged 18-35 represented the greatest increased rate of infection, it was past time that the stereotypical view of HIV as a ‘gay disease’ was rejected – both for the sake of gay men and that of the women who were unaware of the risk they faced. SAQD’s statement highlighted both the danger of a policy which “further stigmatizes a group which has been victimized and marginalized”, as well as emphasizing the importance of this policy for the thousands of Canadians currently on waiting lists, arguing that for many these organs “will mean the difference between life and death”.

NDP MP Irene Mathyssen was present and shared her party’s outrage at the new policy with the gathered crowd. She argued that just as Canada had come to reject racism, sexism and ageism – it was now time to stand up and reject homophobia. The crowd responded with loud applause to her promise that this issue would be brought to the government when the House of Commons resumed, and that the NDP would pressure the government for change. Liberal MP Glen Pearson was unable to attend, but a statement from the Liberal party affirmed their opposition to the policy, a policy which they argued represented yet another example of “the Conservative government mak[ing] its decisions based on ideology rather than empirical fact.”