Staten Island, State Sen Diane Savino urges medical marijuana

By Eric W. Dolan   www.rawstory.com

New York State Senator Diane J. Savino (D) on Wednesday urged Governor Andrew Cuomo to follow the example of New Jersey and allow marijuana to be prescribed to the seriously ill.

New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie announced Tuesdaythat he would lift his suspension on implementing the state’s medical-marijuana program.

"New Jersey showed real compassion for Garden State residents who suffer from painful, debilitating and life-threatening illnesses," Savino said in a letter to Cuomo.

"New York needs to follow their example and pass legislation to allow doctors to prescribe medical marijuana when no other option is available."

She lost both her parents to cancer, and noted in her letter that studies have found marijuana can alleviate pain and other symptoms of diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis in some patients who are unresponsive to other medication.

Savino has cosponsored legislation with with Sen. Thomas Duane (D) and Assembly Health Committee Chairman Richard Gottfried (D) that would legalize medical marijuana in New York for seriously ill patients. Patients would have to register with the state Health Department and would only be permitted to have 2.5 ounces of marijuana at a time.

Cuomo opposed medical marijuana while campaigning for governor. On Wednesday he said he was "reviewing" medical marijuana legislation and "talking to both sides of the issue."

Sex in Bathrooms is Constitutional: ACLU

By Bryan Fischer

The ACLU has submitted a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Sen. Larry Craig, who has been engaged in protracted legal machinations to keep the issue of his guilt in an airport sex sting tied up in courts. All this is in an apparent effort to save face, stave off a Congressional investigation, and generate some thin justification for staying in office to the end of his term.

However, thanks to the law of unintended consequences, the main thing the senator has managed to do is create an opportunity for the ACLU to think up new and creative kinds of constitutional mischief.

The ACLU's brief is predicated on the premise that the senator was in fact soliciting for gay sex last summer in a Minneapolis airport restroom, which won't make the senator very happy since he has spent the last five months trying to withdraw his guilty plea for doing that very thing.

Problematically, the ACLU argues that the senator was in fact entitled to engage in gay sex with a willing partner in a public restroom stall, since people who use such restrooms have, according to a 38-year-old Minnesota Supreme Court ruling, "a reasonable expectation of privacy."

Never mind that, according to a legal analyst on Fox News, the 1970 ruling had to do only with prohibiting police from installing surveillance cameras that could peek into bathroom stalls, thus spying on ordinary citizens doing nothing more than answering a call of nature. The court correctly ruled that citizens should have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" when using a bathroom for its intended purpose.

The court emphatically did not say that citizens using public restrooms as instant love nests were entitled to the same protection.

The ACLU says that the intimacy the senator expected to engage in "would not have called attention to itself in a closed stall in the public restroom," an assertion which is ludicrous on its face. Sexual activity in public restrooms has been banned precisely because it cannot be effectively concealed and because it is in fact disturbing to other members of the public and to their children.

The city of Boise, for instance, had to enact a special ordinance because homosexual encounters in public park bathrooms were becoming such a nuisance to families using the park system.

It's difficult to know what part of the word "public" in the phrase "public restroom" the ACLU does not understand.

Since, in the ACLU's twisted view, private homosexual sex, even in a bathroom stall, is a lawful act (perhaps alluding to the fantastically misguidedLawrence decision of 2003), then soliciting for it (which the ACLU calls a form of protected speech) cannot itself be unlawful.

No court, however, should even allow the ACLU to cite the First Amendment's freedom of speech plank, for the simple reason that the Founders were seeking to protect political speech, not solicitation for gay sex.

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote a Virginia law that specified castration as the punishment for homosexual behavior, would roll over in his own Memorial to see the Constitution bastardized in this way.

But thanks to egregious judicial activism, we are now just one renegade judge away from having gay sex in a public restroom magically transformed into a constitutional right. And if that happens, the families of America will have the ACLU and a senator from Idaho to thank.

© Bryan Fischer
renewamerica.com

Straight Man rejected From Giving Blood: He Appeared GAY

 By JERRY DAVICH Sun-Times Media jdavich@suntimes.com

Aaron Pace is admittedly and noticeably effeminate, but he says he’s not homosexual.

Still, his looks, character and behavior prompted a blood donation center to reject him when he tried to donate blood recently and he’s miffed, to say the least.

“I was humiliated and embarrassed,” said Pace, 22. of Gary. “It’s not right that homeless people can give blood but homosexuals can’t. And I’m not even a homosexual.”

Pace visited Bio-Blood Components Inc. in Gary, which pays for blood and plasma donations, up to $40 a visit. But during the interview screening process, Pace said he was told he could not be a blood donor there because he “appears to be a homosexual.”

No one at Bio-Blood returned calls seeking comment, but donation centers like it, and even the American Red Cross, are still citing a nearly 30-year-old federal policy to turn away gay men from donating.

The Food and Drug Administration policy, implemented in 1983, states that men who have had sex — even once — with another man (since 1977) are not allowed to donate blood.

The policy was sparked by concerns that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was tainting the blood supply. And, back then, screening tests to identify HIV-positive blood had not yet been developed.

Today, all donated blood is tested for HIV, as well as for hepatitis B and C, syphilis and other infectious diseases, before it can be released to hospitals. This is why gay activists, blood centers including the American Red Cross, and even some lawmakers now claim the lifetime ban is “medically and scientifically unwarranted.”

“It is unfair, outrageous and just plain stupid,” said Curt Ellis, former director of The Aliveness Project of Northwest Indiana, an agency that’s been educating the public about HIV-related issues for many years.

“The policy is based on the stigma associated with HIV that existed early on,” Ellis said. “It seems like some stigmas will just never die.”

The Indiana State Department of Health doesn’t have a policy regarding the collection of blood and its criteria. “Nor do we advise blood donation centers on their individual policies,” spokeswoman Amy Bukarica said.

But the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last year voted again not to recommend a change to the FDA’s policy of a lifetime deferral for men who have sex with other men.

“The deferral of men who have had sex with other men is still in effect in Indiana and across the country — with all blood banks, not just the American Red Cross — because all blood banks must be in compliance with FDA regulations,” said Karen Kelley, spokeswoman for the American Red Cross.

“We recommended that the deferral criteria be modified and made comparable with criteria for other groups at increased risk for sexual transmission of transfusion-transmitted infections,” she added.

“While we are disappointed with the committee’s decision, our organization is obligated by law to follow the guidelines set forth by the FDA regarding donor eligibility,” Kelley said.

The American Red Cross, which supplies approximately 40 percent of the nation’s blood supply, determines a potential donor’s sexual history through standardized health and lifestyle questions in a private, confidential health history review, she said. This is similar to how other blood donation centers, such as Bio-Blood, screen potential donors.