The Dumb Law Paradox

In 2020 the FDA decided to change the policy on blood donations for gay and bi men. From a previous complete ban, the FDA is now asking them to be celibate for 3 months before donating. A policy that has no foundation in science, that condemns sexual orientation over sexual behaviors, and rather perpetuates years of stigma. GHMC urged us to call out the bias and the idiocrasy of the new policy in front of the whole nation. To do that, we uncovered the 18 dumbest laws in the USA, and compared them directly to the FDA policy. What we discovered was incredible: each one of these laws, despite how silly they sounded, had better reasoning to exist when compared to the FDA blood donation policy. We turned our findings into a series of 18 informative print ads: in order to do so, we collaborated with a team of lawyers to first crystalize each of the dumb laws in one short sentence, while staying true to the book of laws. We then created a series of modular headlines, that could bring up the ridiculousness of the FDA policy when compared to the dumb laws: with a meme-like structure, the first part of the headline is crafted to create a disambiguation in the reader’s mind. The second part, which is tailor-made for each and every dumb law, brings the paradox right in front of the laws right in front of our eyes.