The Red Cross celebrates Earth Day by gifting blood donors with Environmentally Friendly Shopping Bags during the month of April.
Brookdale ShopRite of Bloomfield has donated "Go Green" reusable shopping bags to the Montclair Red Cross at 63 Park Street for use during this month's blood drive held on April 10. The bags will include a coupon for services at organic dry cleaning shop Village Laundry Center and designer cookies courtesy of Brown Bag Designs & Confections of Montclair.
The Montclair chapter house hosts blood drives every second Thursday of the month. To make an appointment or for more information, please call 973-746-1800.
It should be noted that this offer applies only to heterosexual individuals. Male homosexual persons are not permitted to donate blood, nor are donations from homosexual men accepted under the American Red Cross' Blood Donation Eligibility Guidelines which specify individuals are ineligible who "are a male who has had sexual contact with another male, even once, since 1977." Under the guidlines, which are interpreted and enforced by the FDA, prostitutes, intravenous drug users, and promiscuous heterosexuals are deferred from donation only for a period of one year from their last high risk encounter.
There is no scientific basis whatsoever for such a ban, and it has been repeatedly criticized as gratuitously discriminatory by a wide array of knowledgeable scientists.
Pending the abrogation of this ban, concerned consumers may want to take their business to merchants other than those who support insulting and baseless discrimination.