Are gay people still not allowed to give blood in the US?

9 comments

1. They’ve started easing it up a bit in the past few weeks.

2. They do ask if you had unprotected sex with men. Also if you spent significant time in Europe during mad cow disease and some med procedures over there.

3. They very recently (like weeks ago) proposed a rule change that would allow gay people who’ve only been with a single partner for a set period of time (years, but I don’t remember how long) to give blood. I don’t think this rule has gone into effect yet, though.

4. It isn’t antiquated. It is epidemiological.

   They have just come out with new guidance that would allow monogamous gay couples to donate which is supposed to be rolling out soon.

   The problem is/was that gay men had *significantly* higher rates of sexually transmitted disease and significantly higher numbers of partners. It was just a statistical problem. They can’t test all donated blood for all diseases so they put rules in place to limit the biggest risks.

5. It’s not antiquated but based upon the statistical reality that gay men have lots of unprotected sex with many partners leading to by far the highest rates of STDs among any demographic.

   It’s not feasible to test every donation so you just limit based on known risks to prevent infecting people with diseases.

   https://www.cdc.gov/msmhealth/STD.htm

6. I think that changed very recently.

7. Yea, plasma to. I went to donate plasma for money, I asked the nurse several times if I would be allowed to donate times as I am gay and had sex in the past 3 months, she assured me it’s no issue.

   2 hours of waiting later, I go for the physical and was met with an “Oh, ya we can’t let you donate since you’ve had sex with men.” I was more upset about wasting my 2 hours than not being able to donate, wish they would’ve just told me no when I walked in the door.

   However, I feel like gay men who are in a monogamous relationship should be allowed to donate if both are negative for STDs.

8. It is, and some places do (at least for plasma). For the most part, the questioning kind of works like this…and this is exactly how my experience went. This was in 2017.

   * Are you a man who has sex with men? **Yes**/No

   * Have you had sex with a man in the past 12 months? **Yes**/No

   You can’t give plasma if you’re a man who has had sex with a man in the past 12 months.

   I was told straight up that was why. Then the nurse got preachy on me and went into this long, half-assed narrative about the “achievement” of not having sex before marriage applying to gay men too. I asked “does this apply to women too?” I shit you not, this is the wild response: She stated that they were “gender inclusive,” so that anyone who identified as a man who had sex with men applies, so that includes trans men (female to male). However, I pointed out that the historical reason why these BS policies are in place is because of the HIV epidemic which predominantly affected cisgender men and trans women. She then respond with something like “We know. Trans women are women though, so they don’t carry that risk like they used to.” It was some really fucked up mental gymnastics.

9. It isn’t antiquated, it’s science. Let’s get blunt, unprotected anal sex is basically the most efficient way of spreading HIV outside of an actual blood transfer. When HIV was spreading rapidly it was largely within the gay community for a reason. They literally called it “gay cancer”.

   It is simply a matter of being in a higher risk category that outweighed the benefits for blood donation. It was a practical measure.