I Want To Give Blood During The Coronavirus Pandemic. But I'm Gay, So I'm Not Allowed

By Mathew Lasky


Last week throughout the president’s COVID-19 briefing, United States Surgeon General Jerome Adams called on healthy Residents of the
U.S. To musical group with each other and donate blood to help alleviate shortages caused by needed social distancing measures taken to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Nevertheless giving blood is a privilege for several people, and I, like several other gay and bisexual males I know, was immediately reminded of a uncomfortable truth about living in 2020: We’re still not allowed to donate blood.


case in point, I’ve never donated blood in my life.


the initial and only time I tried was in 2008, throughout one of my first weeks as a freshman in college. A classmate knocked on my door and asked if I’d like to come with them to give blood in a dorm-sponsored blood drive in the lobby of our building. I agreed.


Soon, I noticed myself sitting alongside my new companions, skim-reading a waiver I would have sign sort in attempt to donate. That seemed obvious, something I’d done hundreds of times before at various medical check-ups and appointments.


Although, this time, I found an advisory: you might not directly donate blood in case you're a male who has had sex with a man.


At 18, I was barely out of the closet — I’d only harnessed the courage to come out to my very closest companions, not even my family member. Any time If I realized that I wasn’t allowed to donate blood, I panicked. I had to get out of the scenario, nevertheless I wasn’t prepared to out myself to my new neighbors.


I determined my best course of action was to falsely confide in one of my dormmates that I was afraid of needles, and flee to the elevator and back up to my room. I quietly cried myself to sleep that night, hoping my roommate wouldn’t hear, convinced that each person had seen through my excuse and knew that I was gay. I felt ashamed about who I was.


I haven’t attempted to donate blood since.


Shockingly, since 2008, not much has changed for gay bisexual males, and then some other members of the LGBTQ+ community who aspire to donate blood.


The ban that prevented me from donating blood at 18 was originally put into place in 1986, throughout the throes of the AIDS crisis. At the time, there was no timely blood screening for HIV accessible. Out of the panic that ensued around potential contaminations in blood transfusions, gay and bisexual boys, amongst others, were permanently banned from donating blood.


This permanent ban lasted up until the final days of 2014, much less than each year before marriage equality passed nationwide. It was then that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) amended its policy from a lifetime ban, to a deferral for males who have had sex with males in the past 12 months. Nevertheless even that small step towards destigmatization is still incredibly lacking in practice, and rendered all of the more archaic once you imagine that boys who have sex with males can donate organs and bone marrow without any such restrictions.


group in attempt to be eligible to donate blood In the
U.S., Any man who has had sex with a gentleman must abstain from sex with a man partner for an entire year, an absurdly restrictive and meaningless quantity of time. According to the American Red Cross, all donated blood is now screened for HIV (as well as Hepatitis A, B, C, and syphilis) before it’s used in any blood transfusion. New blood testing technology is also able to calculate HIV in the bloodstream in much less than 45 days, rendering the 12-month deferral timeframe even more inane. (Other countries use a “risk-based” assessment test to screen potential donors.)


Even leading medical groups have debunked the idea that the FDA’s ban is efficient. The American Public Health Association has stated that the ban is “not based in science,” and in 2019 the American Red Cross planned that “blood donation eligibility should not be based on sexual orientation.”


If all blood is tested without consideration of the donor, we can indicate HIV in blood in weeks rather than months, and leading public health groups have spoken out against the ban, then why are gay and bisexual males still forced to wait an entire year immediately after their last sexual encounter to donate blood?


response The solution is unequivocally discrimination.


A 2014 study by the Williams Institute estimates that if the FDA’s ban were to be lifted, an added 365,000 males would donate over 615,000 pints of blood each year. This alone could save the lives of over 1 million people. And, because the assortment of people identifying as LGBTQ+ continues to grow In America, those estimates are likely low.


To combat this discriminatory ban, and to permit gay and bisexual gentlemen, along with others in the LGBTQ+ community, to donate blood and help save lives, GLAAD has launched a petition urging the FDA to immediately lift the ban 12-month deferral on boys who have sex with boys from donating blood.


It’s hard to believe that my experience of being turned away from donating blood at 18 would still stand today, as I approach my thirties. Today, at a blood drive somewhere in the nation, a LGBTQ+ youth would be learning that they’re ineligible to donate blood based on a discriminatory and baseless policy, just like I did 12 years ago.


Policies grounded in stigma rather than science don’t just hurt LGBTQ+ people, although all Residents of the United States, especially right now. For the sake of all Residents of the United States, the FDA must lift its ban on gay and bisexual boys donating blood. All of our lives depend on it.


Mathew Lasky is the Director of Communications at GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy corporation. He was previously a Communications Consultant for the U.S. Centers for Infection Control and Prevention.