The Gay Blood Ban
If you are a gay or bisexual man, your chances of donating blood are slim. Not due to a lack of motivation or a fear of needles, but because of the legal restriction imposed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). You’re most likely deemed an MSM--a man who has had sex with another man. This restricts you from donating blood for a year within the United States, meaning that you would have to remain abstinent from homosexual sex for twelve months before being allowed to donate blood.
The policy was first put in place with the Reagan Administration of the 1980’s during the HIV/AIDs epidemic that impacted thousands of gay men. HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus, is a sexually transmitted disease that breaks down essential parts of the human immune system and makes a person more likely to develop AIDs, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome. AIDs results in the contracting of diseases, illnesses, and cancers that wouldn’t otherwise affect the human body.
Roughly 2/3 of all HIV/AIDs diagnoses are gay and bisexual men. This is due to the higher rate of transmission during anal sex as opposed to vaginal sex, along with a lack of accessible homosexual sex education and healthcare. Although blood donations are tested on-site for STDs and HIV/AIDs, this homophobic and discriminatory policy still remains in place. However, a new movement towards removing the ban has been growing in recent years, so I sat down with a Blood Activist to learn more about the issue.
Jordan Eagles is an artist from New York City whose prefered medium is blood. When he learned that he was unable to donate due to the FDA policy regarding MSM, Eagles decided that he needed to do something about it. “I asked myself a question of if we made an artwork around this issue, could it help inspire dialogue and awareness?...Like all creative things, you don’t always know why an idea pops in your mind, but it appears and you either answer to it or you let it go. This one kept on burning on me and I was really pissed off about this issue so it was a way I felt I could address it and hopefully help raise awareness and conversation,” he said when asked what drove him to create his exhibit, titled “Blood Mirror”.
The artwork is a glass structure containing nine pints of blood donated by nine men from different backgrounds unable to donate with the FDA policy in place--one pint for each man. Two years later, Eagles added on to the exhibit in the form of 50 tubes of blood taken from 50 men on PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis--a daily pill that helps to prevent the transmission and contraction of HIV by 99.9%. Eagles says that the process of gathering volunteers for the exhibit, “was really just talking to people and letting them know I was interesting in this issue and saying to someone, ‘Hey do you happen to know someone that’s gay that’s from Africa? Or from America?’ And them saying, ‘Yeah, actually, I do.’”
Eagles has traveled all over the country with his exhibit, from American University in Washington D.C. to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in California to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Alabama. He’ll typically hold panels with a team of experts, whether they be medical professionals, HIV/AIDs researchers, or gay or bisexual men. He says that he hopes to, “continue to raise awareness of [the policy]. People need to care. You know, if people don’t give a [censored], then nothing’s ever going to get done. People have to genuinely care.” When asked what steps he would take to change the policy to keep the same level of precaution when collecting blood but in an indiscriminate manner, Eagles says, “ I would like to see a policy put into place that first of all doesn’t approach this from a gender-specific questionnaire. I think we’re reaching a point in our society where singling out gay men as potential disease-infested people is not appropriate. We’re at a point where we need to be a little more gender fluid...Make it so it’s fair across the board for all people, all genders, regardless of their sexuality and ask more determining questions to get the answers that you’re actually looking for...It should be based on your behavior; not on your gender or sexuality.”
There was a period in 2016 in which the policy was opened up to the public for comments, but the FDA has not yet said anything about the suggestions made by citizens. However, Eagles is hopeful that the policy won’t be in place for long, primarily due to the United Kingdom recently shortening the deferral period for MSM from one year to three months. Regardless, people across the country should continue to raise awareness of this policy and HIV/AIDs to become a more educated society geared towards overcoming homophobic stigmas that have plagued the world for far too long.
You can read the full interview by clicking here. Thank you to Jordan Eagles for agreeing to partake in this interview and for continuously working towards educating the public on important issues that perpetuate stereotypes against the LGBTQ+ community.
Picture: https://www.visualaids.org/blog/detail/confronting-hiv-stigma-is-certainly-a-huge-component-of-the-blood-mirror-pr
