Gay Men Would Donate Blood, If They Were Allowed

January is National Blood Donor Month. But for millions of gay men around the world, it's a reminder that from London to Los Angeles, gay men can't donate blood no matter how much they'd like to. Why? Because in the eyes of many health officials, men who have sex with men are shifty figures who might introduce sexually-transmitted diseases into the world's blood supply.

Laws banning gay men from donating blood sprang up in the mid 1980s, at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis. In the U.S., the law went into affect in 1983, a full two years before then President Ronald Reagan publicly mentioned AIDS for the first time. Twenty-seven years later, the ban is still in full effect, celebrating another anniversary despite blood shortages in communities throughout the country.

Over in the United Kingdom, where there's also a ban, a new survey shows that if gay men were allowed to donate, close to 80 percent of them would. Instead, these folks are turned away, leaving blood supplies meager, and patients still in need.

Twenty-seven years ago, panic about HIV/AIDS motivated blood bans. But is that still the case today? Or is it just good old-fashioned homophobia at play?

According to UK gay rights mega-activist Peter Tatchell, it's homophobia, through and through.

"We all now carry the mark of the HIV ‘Anti-Christ,’" Tatchell writes. "Every single same-sexer in Britain is categorized by the National Blood Service as a potential purveyor of death and destruction. We are all reckless liars, who can never be trusted to behave with sexual responsibility or to tell the truth about our sexual history and HIV risk factors."

There definitely seems to be a double standard here. Blood policies in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and more lump all gay men into the category of promiscuous boys. Fair? Not really, especially when straight people have been known to engage in sex that health professionals would consider risky, too.

In 2010, gay blood bans just don't cut the mustard like many thought they did. In Canada, an attorney presented evidence earlier this month that suggested that universal bans on gay men donating blood aren't based on sound science or sociology. In Canada, blanket bans on gay blood stretch to any man who has sex with another man, no matter if the man in question is in a monogamous relationship, no matter if the man in question practices safe-sex, and no matter if the man in question hasn't had sex with another dude since 1978.

That's pretty unacceptable. Nobody wants to threaten the safety of the world's blood supply. But at a time when blood shortages are as common as a Starbucks on a street corner, why discriminate against men who haven't engaged in the risky sexual behaviors that blood bank policies so often think they do?

There is a small ray of hope in this debate. A few countries -- France, Italy, Spain and Sweden, to name a few -- have switched their policy to allow gay men to donate, if said men haven't had sex in the past year. That's not perfect policy, but it sure is an improvement over 1977.

Ariel Boone over at To Love My Country perhaps put it best. "The policy stigmatizes gay men as diseased people who need to be quarantine," Boone writes.

We've fought for two decades to destroy the meme that queer people were diseased. We shouldn't allow blood banks, no matter where they are in the world, to get away with sending that message.

Photo credit: Jeremyfoo