Red Cross blood-giving policy stigmatizes gays

Publication Date: 10/06/2008

Darrell Woodman's letter of Oct. 2 subtly deploys a number of very dangerous erroneous assumptions that need to be addressed. One cannot assume that a group is entirely pure because it does some good things. Thus Mr. Woodman's contention that the American Red Cross helps victims of disasters would give them immunity from accusations of bigotry is indeed very dangerous and over-simplistic.

The Red Cross' ban on blood donations from males who had sex with other males since 1977 is an excellent example of the social harm caused by homophobia, because it profiles and stigmatizes social groups instead of relying on scientific evidence, and in doing so feeds and perpetuates prejudice. The Red Cross could get away with their over-simplified profiling only because they targeted oppressed and rejected groups. A woman with a couple dozen anonymous sex partners would be at a higher risk of giving an infected donation than a gay man with two or three life-time sex partners. Risk was never the primary factor in the Red Cross' profiling efforts. In the 1980s, when AIDS first hit the public consciousness, donations plummeted because of completely unreasonable fears of acquiring AIDS through donating itself. They had been catering to the unreasonable fears of ignorant people. The Red Cross has effective scientific means of detecting infected blood ' much more effective than their blunt profiling techniques. One would think that an organization like the American Red Cross would make fighting prejudice and bigotry a priority, but it is only recently (2007) that they have argued for removal of the ban, but were rejected by the Bush Administration.

Mike Sloothaak

Staff