Yet even these regulations are blatantly discriminatory, and ignore the material realities of HIV/AIDS transmission — while allowing similarly risky (but heterosexual) donors to give freely.
The reason given for these ongoing restrictions is that MSM still have the highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS by demographic in the U.S.; the CDC estimates the lifetime risk of MSM contracting HIV to be one in six, orders of magnitude more than heterosexual men or women (at one in 524 and one in 253, respectively). But MSM are far from the only demographic with an elevated prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the U.S.: more than 42% of newly infected patients in 2019 were Black, for example, and overall cases per capita are higher in the Northeast than other regions.
It would be absurd to deny any Black people living in New York City the opportunity to give blood based on those demographic risk factors, yet there’s about as much statistical evidence to support such a move as there is for continuing to demand sexual abstinence from all MSM donors. In the meantime, heterosexual people who have frequent unprotected sex are still seen as safer blood donors on paper than any given gay or bi man who is in a monogamous relationship.
The legacy of gay panic that prompted the initial bans in the 1980s, when HIV/AIDS was still assumed to be a disease uniquely plaguing the gay male community, is still very much alive in these “progressive” half measures. The shift from a lifetime ban to a yearlong ban to a three-month one is a kind of Zeno’s paradox, always approaching the real reform needed but never actually getting there. It’s an insult that misinterprets the real reason HIV/AIDS is still so prevalent in the LGBTQ+ community — it’s not that gay sex is more prone to STI transmission than straight sex, but that gay men were left to die by uncaring instutions for decades, and that gay Black and Latine men living in poverty today don’t have as much access to medications like PrEP as their more affluent white and straight peers.
What makes this insult all the more galling is the “we’re all trying to find the guy who did this” tone struck by governmental bodies who could end this practice at any time. “The legacy of bans on blood donation continues to be painful, especially for LGBTQI+ communities,” a White House spokesperson told ABC News last week. “The President is committed to ensuring that this policy is based on science, not fiction or stigma.” The spokesperson went on to state that no policy changes will take place until after the conclusion of the Red Cross-sponsored ADVANCE study, which will evaluate the safety of shifting from a time-based deferral system to one that gauges individual donor risk, and expects to release its findings “mid-2022.”
