From Man Sentenced for Murder of Trans Teen to a Center Changing Blood Donation Protocol, This Week in Across the Country – SouthFloridaGayNews.com
This week read about an Arkansas man sentenced to prison for the murder of Brayla Stone, and an LGBT center changing its blood donation protocol in Los Angeles.
Arkansas Man Sentenced for Trans Teen’s Murder
Last week, 20-year-old Trevone Hayse Miller was sentenced to 50 years in prison after pleading guilty to the murder of a transgender teen last year in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Weeks after her 17th birthday, Brayla Stone was found dead in a parked car on a walking trail in Little Rock. Investigators found that Miller was afraid Stone would go public with their relationship, and discussed his intentions to kill Stone with friends and family prior to committing murder. The charge was reduced from capital murder, which carries the death penalty or life in prison, to 50 years as a result of a plea deal.
At the time of Stone’s death, David Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, said in a statement to the Grio, “Brayla Stone was 17 years young when someone murdered her because we live in a society where it is not yet explicit that when we say BlackLivesMatter we mean all Black lives, which includes Black trans women and girls.”
LA LGBT Center Changes Blood Donation Protocol
Photo via Pixabay.
Recruiters at Los Angeles LGBT Center are on the search for 250–300 gay and bisexual men between 18 to 39 years old for a new study intended to change the way The U.S. Food and Drug Administration screens potential blood donors.
For decades, the administration has resorted to a “time-deferral” policy that prohibits men who have sex with men from giving blood up to a year after their last encounter. The time deferral was relaxed to three months in response to COVID-19, but the LA Center is one of eight centers nationwide that will shift to a questionnaire that assesses each individual’s HIV risk factors.
LA LGBT Center’s Chief Medical Officer Robert Bolan said in a statement, “The decades-old policy was enacted at a time when there was little science on the mechanisms of HIV transmission and the epidemic was concentrated in the gay community. The Center is eager to contribute, through the ADVANCE study, in ending the stigma surrounding HIV and AIDS and the discrimination that targets gay and bisexual men.”