Queer Life: December 2005

Stop fighting the ban on gay blood donations

January 2004

If it were not for lesbians, there would be no blood available for transfusion anywhere in North America to prune-veined accident victims and hemophiliacs who've sprung a leak.

Having filled out the questionnaire for potential donors, I can say that we're it: No lesbians, no blood. That's exclusively lesbian, white-bread gals who never travel or do needle drugs and were born in North America and sleep with North Americans (and never during your period, and never after cutting yourself on the bread knife).

I'm only exaggerating a tiny bit.

There might be a handful of heterosexual women married to the same guy for 50 years who qualify, and some sad-eyed teen virgins hidden away from any chance of fun by overbearing parents, but lesbians are the best bet.

I had previously given blood once, about 20 years ago, and my New Year's resolution for 2004 was to donate my own renewable resource to Hema-Quebec, the blood collection agency here in Montreal. (The rest of Canada is overseen by Canadian Blood Services, but we special people in Quebec believe in cultural autonomy and that public money be spent twice on bureaucratic duplication.)

The screening took longer than the actual dribbling of a few drams of the red stuff into a see-through sack.

In response to the endless interrogatives: I haven't been to England since Mad Cow, though my United Kingdom-living sister recently visited. I was prepared to swear that I had not boiled and eaten her possibly contaminated brain, but that was the one question I was not asked.

Information about just about everything else imaginable was demanded. One section even requires that a nurse pop each query out loud, and then record the answer. I had gone ahead on my own anyway, curious to read -- and so I was required to go through it all again. The nurse ticked off the same boxes, again, in a special red pen. I even had to re-sign the sheet in front of her.

Ah bureaucracy. But lawyers have reasons for all that we mere mortals do at their behest.

Any woman who's knowingly had sex with a bisexual man in the last 12 months is excluded. Any man who's had gay sex since 1977 is banned. And there's no appeal for those who've worn condoms -- you're a pariah regardless. Tough luck.

Many gay activists call this discrimination. And of course it is.

In November 2003, the Canadian Blood Services got a court order requiring an internet service provider to reveal the name of a customer who'd sent an anonymous e-mail saying that he, as a gay man, had given blood, to protest the association's discriminatory stand.

The folks at blood services announced at the time that they were going to sue the guy for misrepresentation, though perhaps some sort of low-level terrorism charge would be better.

I believe the restriction on gay blood donations to be perfectly acceptable discrimination.

To give blood is not a right. Shelter and food are rights, pouring my blood into a baggy is not.

For years, the gay community argued that AIDS was a gay disease and that we needed culturally specific organizations and funding to fight it. We never argued that others don't get AIDS -- of course they do. But for our own sakes, for our own health and health care and for our own culturally-specific awareness campaigns, we must continue to see AIDS as a gay disease. And we can't then get angry when others agree.

Any exclusion of gay men can and will be read by bigots as confirming their own nasty prejudices. For that, I have no easy placating response. Of course it does.

And Canadian Blood Services and Hema-Quebec must face up to the fact that they're encouraging discrimination in the public domain -- and they must do something about it.

It's not like it's a hard thing to fix.

Quite simply: blood services organizations must target the gay male community. Take out ads, call gay paper reporters with interview offers, mention gay men in all outreach efforts. Not to ask them to give blood, but to get them on board as volunteers. Clinics, for example, require help -- not only from those who bare veins in their arms and wince as that needle goes in -- but volunteers to escort groggy donors to litters for a 10-minute rest post blood-letting.

Blood services can and must ensure that clinics are clearly and obviously gay-inclusive zones. Heteros want to give blood? Good for you, it's your civic duty to see if you qualify. But know that you are NOT walking into a fag-free zone. There will be gay men here serving you cookies and an orange juice.

And gay men, you have a responsibility to volunteer and to be visibly gay when you do so. Wear a homo T-shirt or talk about a boyfriend.

Blood services people also need to embrace lesbians. They must grab hold of us, target their advertising at us. Because they need us to give blood. They need us to save lives. And we will, but only if they take the trouble to ask. Hema-Quebec, Canadian Blood Services: acknowledge us in positive ways, and do it now. It's time to make good.