uh, yeah, pretty much. What you don’t seem to get is that this isn’t a moral issue. We don’t care if you chose to be at risk, or if what you did was wrong, or if you’re really a nice person and very careful; a risk is a risk, and statistically, sex between two men is a risk. (Sex between two women is about as low risk as it gets, so lesbians are welcome to donate.) yes, a monogamous relationship that practices safe sex is relatively low risk, but they don’t really have time to go over your entire love life in detail just so they can let a few more gay men donate blood.

You know who else gets a lifetime ban? People who grew up in sub-saharan Africa. Most of them are not druggies and prostitutes either, but I rarely hear them throwing a fit over their “right” to give blood. Ditto zookeepers.*

*I recognize that the vast majority of gay people are reasonable and non-tantrumming types. Some of them even understand statistics and window periods (which is so rare among the general population I’ve pretty much given up on explaining the fine points, even though the information is right there, freely available to anyone who knows how to use google.) I do not intend to imply that gays are uniquely bitchy, just that there seems to be more people who have heard wild rumours about anti-gay blood prejudice than there are people who have actually educated themselves about the various risk factors that bar one from donating.

To be fair? Really? So comparing monogamous, safe gay men to drug users and prostitutes is fair, right?