As most of you may have noticed thanks to the scattered number of posters and advertisements strewn across campus last week, USI just finished hosting its annual blood drive.

As someone who has had experience with family members being in dire need of blood transfusions, I have always held the upmost respect for agencies like the Red Cross. Their dedication to ensuring that blood is consistently available during the most crucial of times makes them lifesavers in every sense of the word.

While I couldn’t be more thankful for their existence, I can be a little frustrated with their bias. For quite sometime they have boasted the phrase “have you saved a life today?” as one of their slogans. It is a very moving sentiment, and it instantly causes people to feel compelled to donate blood. As I passed by all of the promotional memorabilia for the blood drive even I, myself, was somewhat inclined to participate, but considering my squeamish reaction to needles, I just couldn’t muster up the courage to do so.

But what about those individuals who truly want to save others lives? What about the ones who can overcome their own hesitations and oppositions to the sharp pointy objects, long hoses and large bags painted red through long slow drips of their own blood? Shouldn’t they be allowed to donate? Apparently not, if they are a homosexual.

Prior to a conversation I held with a close friend this weekend, I had no idea that one of the prerequisites for giving blood was to be heterosexual. I thought my friend must have been mistaken. So I decided to do a little research of my own. They were right. Prior to giving blood, willing donors have to answer a slew of questions relating to their personal lives. These questions range everywhere from places traveled to sexual preferences. I can understand why an extended stay in a third world country, low level of iron or existence of any sort of a disease immediately bars candidates from donation. I cannot, however, understand why a man who has sex with men or a MSM, as the donation agencies call it, should be banned.

In a medical post I found on ProQuest entitled “Who’s afraid of gay men’s blood? We are,” Julia Belluz, explained the United States is not alone in its ban on homosexual donations. France is also guilty of this bias and although in Canada MSM donors are allowed, they must first have completed a 34-year period of celibacy. Belluz goes on further to state the initial reasoning behind the ban was understandable. When it first came into existence, the HIV outbreak was in full swing, and its rapid spread was primarily found in MSM. Now times have changed and the testing criterion has improved extensively as well as the variation in infected individuals.

After reading the article and confirming my friend’s statements, I have to admit I was a little appalled. In society today men, women and children across all ethnicities have been and could potentially be infected by the disease. There is no reason why a sexual preference should ban someone from potentially helping others. For all we know one of us could be in need of a donation someday, but the blood type we require isn’t available because someone said, “Sorry, you aren’t allowed to save a life today. You’re gay.”