On this day in queerstory: Mexico lifts ban on gay blood donors

On this day in 2012, the Secretariat of Health in Mexico lifted the ban on men who have sex with men blood donation. This allowed them to donate to the same conditions as heterosexuals.

Beyond this, December 27 sits in a liminal space on the calendar: the holidays are winding down, the year is almost over, and attention quietly shifts toward what comes next. In queer history, this date has come to symbolize something deceptively powerful—planning. Not just hoping, but imagining futures in a world that has often insisted queer people don’t have one.

Globally, queer lives have long been shaped by uncertainty. For much of the 20th century, many LGBTQ+ people were discouraged—explicitly or implicitly—from imagining long lives, stable relationships, or old age. Criminalization, medical stigma, family rejection, and state violence all worked to shorten queer horizons. December 27, with its forward-looking energy, highlights how radical it has been for queer people simply to plan ahead.

Across cultures, year-end periods have traditionally been times for assessment and intention-setting. Queer communities adapted these rituals to their own realities. In underground bars, community centers, shared apartments, and now online spaces, late-December conversations often revolved around survival questions: Who made it this year? Who didn’t? What do we need to change to keep more of us alive?

During the AIDS crisis, these questions were painfully literal. In cities around the world—from New York to Paris, Cape Town to Bangkok—December 27 and the days around it became moments of reckoning. To plan for the future in the face of mass death was not naïve; it was defiant. Making plans, organizing care networks, or setting goals for the coming year became acts of resistance against a culture that expected queer people to disappear.

Globally, December 27 also intersects with activism in practical ways. Many organizations finalize reports, strategies, and campaigns during this period. For queer movements, these year-end plans have often reflected both urgency and imagination: how to respond to new laws, how to protect those most at risk, how to build something better with limited resources. Planning became a survival skill.

Culturally, December 27 highlights queer relationships to time itself. Queer lives often unfold outside dominant timelines—marriage, reproduction, inheritance—that structure mainstream planning. Instead, queer futures are built around chosen family, community care, mobility, and adaptability. This has produced alternative visions of what a “good life” looks like, many of which are now influencing broader social thinking.

Globally, these queer visions have traveled. Ideas about mutual aid, non-traditional kinship, and flexible living arrangements—once born of necessity—have increasingly shaped responses to crises, from pandemics to economic instability. Queer communities, long practiced in imagining futures under pressure, offered models the world suddenly needed.

December 27 also carries a quieter emotional weight. After the intensity of the holidays, many queer people find space to ask personal questions they’ve been putting off. Do I stay? Do I go? Who do I want to build with next year? These decisions may be made in silence, but they shape the arc of queer history just as surely as laws and protests.

Importantly, December 27 reminds us that queer history is not only about reacting to harm. It is also about creation. About building futures that once seemed impossible. Every plan made, every dream allowed, every commitment to continue is evidence of a history that refuses to end.