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Is Britain’s Gay Blood Ban Unfairly Outing Cops?

Britain’s Gay Police Association, which boasts membership in all 52 of the United Kingdom’s police units, has found a novel way to attack the National Blood Service’s prohibition on gays donating blood: the ban unfairly outs gay cops.

Like the United States and Canada, the U.K.’s national blood agency bars gay men from donating blood, with the assumption that their “lifestyles” (read: having the butt sex) puts them at greater risk of being poz, and donating tainted blood. Also like the United States and Canada, the U.K.’s National Blood Service screens all blood donations for unwanted pathogens before ever passing it off for use on patients.

In Britain, any man who’s ever had sex with another man, condom or not, is banned from donating for life. NBS maintains lifting the ban would mean a 5X increase of HIV-positive blood entering the system.

In a new push to strike down the ban, the Gay Police Association — which landed in trouble back in 2006 for claiming Christians were behind a spike in anti-gay hate crimes — mounts the argument that the ban is “homophobic in its archaic position on the life ban for gay men as donors.” By soliciting donations from those working in public service, the NBS by default calls attention to gay police officers who refuse to participate — because they simply can’t. First you tell us you don’t want our disgusting blood, and now you out us?

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