Gay Men and Blood Donation

So, you may not know (as I didn't until a few years ago), but the government forbids accepting blood donations from gay men.  See a background story here.  Actually, if you've ever read the questions before giving blood, you know that the restriction is on any man who has had sex with another man at any point in life.  Compare that restriction to the fact that heterosexuals who are knowingly having sex with HIV/AIDS positive people are allowed donate a year after their last sexual intercourse with the HIV positive partner.

This blood donation restriction makes no sense!  It's just a way to stigmatize the gay community.  It's biggotry, plain and simple.  Obviously, if preventing HIV/AIDS contamination in the blood supply was the issue, heterosexuals would also face lifetime bans if they slept with an HIV positive person at any point in their lives.

The obvious, and utterly ridiculous, basis for this anti-gay restriction is the outrageous and totally outdated idea that all gay people have AIDS.  I'm old enough to remember when people thought AIDS was exclusively a gay disease.  (Actually, my evangelical friends, we're all old enough as the Rev. Jerry Faldwell and his bretheren continued to espouse that view until his death, if memory serves.)  But that thinking has been completely disproved in every way imaginable!  At this point, believing gays are diseased--with HIV/AIDS or  homosexuality itself--is silly, and more indicative of personal prejudice than anything else.

Like all forms of bigotry, this ban injures the people who support it.  Just as whites are damaged by racism (via limited social relationships, deep seated fears, subjugation to laws designed primarily to control people of color, etc), so anti-gay heterosexuals are willing to risk their own lives by decreasing the emergency blood supply just to stigmatize gays.

I used to donate blood regularly on campus during college.  But it's been more than 4 years since I last did that.  I am unwilling to participate in the national lie that 1) gays don't exist -- thus all male donors certifying they haven't had gay sex, and 2) gays are universally HIV/AIDS carriers.  Recently, I wanted to donate bone marrow.  If you don't know, there is a desperate need for African Americans to donate bone marrow.  I don't know the science, but for some reason, having racially similar donors reduces rejection rates in marrow transfusions.  Again, I volunteered to help meet the desperate need, but the center rejected me because of the anti-gay ban.  I seriously doubt the potential beneficiary of my marrow donation would have made the same decision.