The short days of winter bring the sun swiftly over the yard arm and I'm already well into the supermarket own-brand alcohol, but the idiocy of every day life still prickles unabated. I'm referring primarily to a campaign currently gaining momentum among the underemployed figureheads of student 'politics': an attack on the Blood Service's policy that a man who has had recently had penetrative sex with another man is exempt from giving blood. I quote from the Facebook group Donation not Discrimination, which has a hefty 1,420 members:
“Gay and bisexual men are banned by the National Blood Service (NBS) from donating blood for life, female partners of bisexual men are also affected. This year we are running a nation wide campaign to change this policy, donation not discrimination.”
This group is clearly insane. I can't believe that anyone would advocate a move which would increase the risk of HIV infection for those receiving blood transfusions. Men who have sex with men are the single most vulnerable group in terms of HIV infection. In brute terms, a sexually active male homosexual is far more likely to have HIV than a man who does not have homosexual sex, assuming that neither are recent immigrants from an area with high HIV infection rates or intravenous drug user (both these groups are barred from donating blood as well). Blood can contain HIV and be infectious for up to six months before it shows up on tests, so it is perfectly legitimate to screen people who have been engaging in high risk activity recently from giving blood, be those activities heterosexual or homosexual. It is virtually impossible to find a heterosexual male who does not pay for sex, travel outside Europe or take drugs intravenously who is HIV positive.
The Post Newt is very far from homophobic. Fear or dislike of gay men is in its basis the most irrational of all prejudices: the member of a specific religion may attack purely on the (perhaps misinterpreted) tenets of that religion, the member of race different to ones own have been known to attack as a result of that difference, but homosexuality has never been known to pose a threat to the heterosexual. There are two logical reactions to homosexuality: arousal and indifference. ‘Gay Bashing’ has more to do with a taste for violence than distaste for sodomy. So once we clean our minds of any idea of discrimination what are we left with? A demographic prone to HIV. This entire campaign is tied up with our continued cultural fear of HIV. To say that a practising homosexual is prone to infection is not some sort of blood libel, any more that to say that I (Hamilton strikes own chest manfully) am more likely, as a fair skinned individual to contract skin cancer is a melanist attack on the ‘Aryan race’. It is pure chance that HIV happens to be prevalent among those individuals that society has traditionally condemned, those who practise homosexual sex, intravenous drug use and prostitution (all activities, incidentally, which The Post Newt heartily condones, and plans to market over the internet in the near future).
Well, back to the Squidcave for me: go forth and sin no more.
