Blood Donation Bans For Gay And Bisexual Men Continue Stigma

Blood donation is a direct way to save lives and help others in need. However, if you’re a gay or bisexual man in Australia, you’re banned by the Red Cross from donating blood under homophobic rules introduced during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. 

For many queer people, including myself, conversations around donating blood are rather painful. It’s difficult to see the constant advertisements about blood donation being the best possible thing you can do. I’ve had people call me out for not engaging in blood donation drives at university. Unaware of the bans, they simply thought I was being selfish. It’s the same ignorance that Lifeblood, which is what the Red Cross calls its blood donation organisation, feeds off of. They are able to continue to market themselves, and those who donate, as the best people in the community while they lock queer people out and peddle homophobic messaging from the ‘80s and ‘90s. 

It begs the question: if Australia is constantly at risk of running out of blood, why would they continue to block an entire community of people who would be willing and able to donate? At this point, a continued ban feels like more of a moral standpoint than a scientific one. 

Why Can’t Gay And Bisexual Men Donate Blood In Australia?

Currently, in Australia, if you meet what the Red Cross deems as “at risk sexual activity”, you can’t donate blood — or you have to wait three months after such “activity”. These policies largely target gay and bisexual men — any man who’s had oral or anal sex with another man, even safe sex with a condom. A man who’s had sex with or without a condom with a man they suspect of having had oral or anal sex with another man is also restricted from giving blood. Same for a male or female sex worker. Women who have sex with women can donate blood, unless it’s with a trans person. Similarly, trans people can donate blood but it comes with restrictions — mostly if the trans person has had sex with a “male or transgender partner” in the last three months. 

The ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men was introduced in Australia in the 1980s during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. At that time, homophobia was rife and queer people were treated with complete disregard by society, doctors, and hospitals. When news broke that gay men in Los Angeles had fallen ill, it was labeled as “gay cancer” or “gay plague”. It was then officially called Gay-Related Immunodeficiency (GRID). I’d argue that any ban introduced during that time probably isn’t worth maintaining today.

Australia isn’t the only country that has had the blood donation ban, but many have removed it —  including the UK, Canada and France. Even the US has removed the ban. No offence to the US, but if we are behind them on anything to do with queer issues, it’s not the best look. 

These bans feed into the archaic narrative that gay people are dirty, that our blood is dirty and that queer sex is inherently unsafe. Even if we are practicing safe sex, it’s still deemed “unsafe”. 

The Double Standards Of Donating Blood

Previously the ban in Australia was for 12 months, but queer advocates in Australia have put pressure on the Red Cross for years to remove the ban. This led to the Red Cross reducing the ban from 12 months to three months. 

Recently Lifeblood received approval from the Therapeutic Goods Administration and Australian government to remove sexual activity rules for plasma donations. Plasma is the yellowish liquid part of our blood that holds the cells together. Sure, the “plasma pathway” is a world-first but we still can’t donate blood. To even have that conditional status is frustrating. To keep slowly changing it like this feels like dangling a carrot in front of us. Dr Sharon Dane, from the Let Us Give campaign said that the plasma-only donation was the blood donation equivalent to what “civil unions were to marriage equality — a poor substitute for equity and fairness” and would “entrench a second-class status for gay donors”. Even Queensland’s health minister, Shannon Fentiman, called on the Federal Government to remove the ban earlier this year. 

Blood donation bans always highlight an incredible double standard. Queer people, especially those on PrEP — a medication that prevents the risk of HIV transmission by 99 percent — are required to have three-month sexual health checks to get a new prescription. Our blood is regularly checked to ensure HIV transmission hasn’t occurred. Heterosexual people, however, can donate blood at will even if they aren’t regularly checking for STIs or HIV.

What’s more is that Lifeblood won’t even allow those on PrEP to donate blood. That’s because they say it limits the ability of their screening tools to pick up early transmission of HIV. Well of course it does. It prevents the spread. So someone on PrEP who’s using it as prescribed is highly unlikely to get HIV.  

Unpacking Lifeblood’s Terrible TikTok Ad 

To make matters worse, Lifeblood also created a terrible reverse psychology ad that keeps popping up on my TikTok ‘For You’ page. It features a presumably straight cis man, Ty Judson, talking about “three reasons why you shouldn’t donate blood”.

One of the reasons Ty mentions is that “you don’t want to meet incredible people”, before saying the blood donation centre was a hub of kindness and compassion “as if they had gathered all the greatest people in the community”. His third reason was that you shouldn’t donate blood if you don’t want to make an impact on your community. This messaging is really gross. So because I can’t donate blood I don’t want to make an impact on my community? 

It’s probably not the best for Lifeblood to say that the best people in the community donate blood when they prevent queer people from doing so simply if they are sexually active. We’re made to feel like we aren’t good people or we don’t want to save lives because we don’t donate blood which couldn’t be further from the truth. 

In 2016, after the mass shooting at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida, there was a critical need for blood donations. However, queer people were barred from helping their friends and loved ones because of the blood donation bans in the US at the time. 

Is HIV Transmission A Big Concern In Australia?

HIV transmission will always be a concern for many. Given how many people we lost to HIV/AIDS, lives that didn’t need to be lost, ending HIV transmission is an important goal. Because of the dedication and hard work of activists and medical advancements, HIV transmission in Australia is at an all-time low. In fact, Australia is world-leading in reducing HIV among gay and bisexual men. We’re also in a position to potentially end HIV transmission by 2025. 

Rodney Croome from the Let Us Give campaign told SBS News that “The new infection rate amongst gay men is going down to a point where the risk of HIV transmission through blood donation is statistically negligible“. He said that the real safety risk is from new infections of HIV, regardless of their sexual orientation. 

I believe a big part of why we still have blood donation bans is the fact that Australia has kept the HIV stigma and shame from the ‘80s and ‘90s. People living with HIV today are able to live long, healthy lives. Many people living with HIV are now at a point where their viral load is so small that it’s undetectable. Undetectable means untransmittable. 

We need to work on removing the shame and stigma of HIV in Australia, but we can’t do that if our blood is still seen as “unsafe” or “risky”.

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Ky is a proud Kamilaroi and Dharug person and writer at Junkee. Follow them on Instagram or on X. 

Image: Unsplash