Gays -˜blood terrorists’

The leader of a Tasmanian-based Christian group slammed Australia’s gay activists with the most horrifying slur.

Australian Federation of the Family founder Jack Sonneman accused activist Rodney Croome and opponents of the Red Cross gay blood ban of threatening blood terrorism, as a US AIDS activist was quoted proposing in 1988.

If homosexual activists do not get their demands all gay men should donate blood, if it takes blood terrorism so be it, Sonneman said to Sydney Star Observer.

Rodney Croome down in Tasmania is saying the same thing, encouraging their people to donate blood to the Red Cross, knowing gay people carry all these diseases.

Neither Croome nor Michael Cain, the man who complained about the Red Cross gay ban to the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Tribunal, had ever suggested lying to bypass the ban or deliberately infecting the blood supply.

Those of us involved in the blood donation case have been very clear we are against compromising the safety of the blood supply, Croome said.

The level of risk associated with gay men had been greatly overestimated, he said, and many gay men could donate without increasing risk levels.

Mr Sonneman’s comments stray beyond reasonable debate into what is potentially vilification and defamation, Croome said.

Sonneman’s slur against gay blood ban opponents was published on Christian Today’s Australian-based website last week, along with statistics of STI rates among San Francisco gay men.

It’s not a Tasmanian issue, it’s a national issue that just happens to be pushing to the front in Tasmania, Sonneman said.

They wanted adoption, marriage. They wanted to integrate. They wanted to have their lifestyle equated with normalcy and healthy and heterosexual family life.