Free Republic

... Maybe you fooled around with a guy 30 years ago and have spent the rest of your life as a celibate priest. Maybe you've been in a faithful same-sex marriage for 40 years. Maybe you've passed an HIV test. It doesn't matter. You can't give blood, because you're in the wrong "group." On the other hand, if you're in the right group—heterosexuals—you can give blood despite dangerous behavior. If you had sex with a prostitute, an IV drug user, and an HIV-positive opposite-sex partner 13 months ago, you're good to go. This kind of group-based screening is a long-standing...

Following two days of testimony, a federal panel Friday voted against recommending changes to ease the current blood donation restrictions for gay men, saying more research was needed to help “create a road map forward” for future change. By a 9-6 vote, members of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability agreed to continue the current donor policy which rejects blood donations from any man who has had sex with another man — a category know as "MSM" — even once in the past 33 years. Gay rights groups and others...

Groups urge government to lift lifetime restriction Should gay men be allowed to donate blood? A government health committee is re-examining that question today. A regulation created at the height of the 1980s' AIDS epidemic banned men who have had sex with another man since 1977 from ever giving blood. Advocacy groups, blood-collection organizations and some members of Congress are calling for the Food and Drug Administration to revise the lifetime ban, which has been reviewed twice in the past 10 years, but left unchanged.