House Democrats are pressing the Food and Drug Administration to ditch a federal policy that allows gay men to donate blood only if they have abstained from sex for one year.
Gay rights activists have protested the policy for a while, but Sunday’s shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando prompted lawmakers to draw attention to the issue. Instead of allowing blood donations based on sexual orientation, the FDA should require everyone, including gay men, to fill out a questionnaire to determine their risk of spreading an infection, several Democrats wrote in a letter to the agency on Tuesday.
“We’re talking about a policy of the 20th century,” said Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif. “This is not a time to let the 20th century dictate how we do things in the 21st century.”
The FDA already has taken steps to allow gay men to donate their blood, last year lifting a comprehensive ban that applied to men who had sex with another man even once. Now, they must abstain from sex for just one year.
But the Democrats said such a policy is still discriminatory, noting that heterosexual men with multiple partners don’t have to observe a period of abstinence. Instead, they want the FDA to allow donations based on someone’s risk of transfusion-transmissible infections and not on sexual orientation.
“Due to the [men who have sex with men] deferral policy, many healthy gay and bisexual men are prohibited from donating desperately needed blood,” said the letter, also signed by Reps. Barbara Lee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jared Polis, Dianne DeGette and Alcee Hastings.
The Human Rights Campaign also wants the ban lifted. Government Affairs Director David Stacy said that gay men trying to donate blood for the dozens of injured victims in Orlando are being unfairly turned away.
“As we think about Orlando, we have to find ways to reduce the stigma,” Stacy said.
It’s not clear if the FDA will consider changing its policy further, as it made the most recent revision in December, after more than a year of deliberations.
