You can tell something is wrong with Canadian policy when even Americans are more progressive on an issue.
Case in point: the Canadian Blood Services’ ban on blood donations by men who have had sex with men (MSM) even once since 1977.
Canada has long been recognized as a leader in human rights, but is falling behind in this area. Australia and Sweden have recently lifted their bans, and even Russia, where homophobia remains a large problem, lifted their ban in 2008.
In America, where only five of the 50 states allow gay marriage, there is a bill in progress to end blood donor discrimination.
The blood ban was introduced in Canada in the 1980s, when HIV and AIDS were just becoming publicly known, and information or testing was not readily available.
The precautionary measures were meant to be temporary, but the MSM policy still remains unchanged today.
Canadian Blood Services (CBS) have received heat in recent years from gay rights groups who say that there is no excuse for the ban due to advances in science.
The testing of blood donations has improved dramatically since HIV/AIDS first appeared, as the current test is 10,000 times more sensitive than those used in the 1980s.
“From a scientific perspective, these regulations don’t really hold water anymore,” says lawyer Patricia Lefebour.
Her client, Kyle Freeman, has been in the news lately for challenging those regulations.
In the first trial of its kind, the CBS filed a lawsuit against Freeman, a 36-year old gay man who admitted to lying on their questionnaire in order to donate blood 18 times between 1990 and 1999.
Freeman, in turn, then launched a countersuit against them, claiming the current MSM deferral policy is discriminatory under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
If the judgment is ruled in his favour, it could be the first step towards changing the policy.
A verdict from Ontario Superior Court Justice Catherine Aitken is not expected until the spring.
While the CBS says that their policy is not discriminatory, the fact is, the majority of men having sex with men are gay.
And while it is true that gay men are the largest demographic living with the disease, the fastest growing HIV-positive demographic are young, heterosexual women. But, the CBS won’t be restricting straight women from donating blood anytime soon.
Labelling gays as ‘high risk’ and putting them in the same category as intravenous drug users and prisoners advances stigma, and keeps the idea alive that HIV/AIDS is a ‘gay’ disease.
If Freeman does win this case (and any subsequent appeals), and the CBS and Health Canada are forced to go back to the drawing board to rework the questionnaire, they should consider writing up a new question based on sexual behaviours, not orientation.
On the current CBS donor questionnaire, it doesn’t ask anything about whether or not you have practiced unprotected sex or engaged in other risky sexual behaviours.
So, a straight man that practices unprotected sex with various partners would be okayed to donate blood, but a gay man in a monogamous relationship would not.
The double standards have caused many other gay men like Freeman, who want to donate blood, to lie about their sexual history on the questionnaire.
While some might call this deception callous or dangerous, the fact is that most gay men go to get tested for HIV and STIs much more frequently than the straight population.
Freeman went to get tested for HIV every time before he donated blood to make sure his samples were clean.
The bottom line is that the CBS needs blood, and they’re disregarding donations from an entire demographic.
Ron Vezina, director of media relations for the CBS, says that while one in two Canadians are eligible to donate via current regulations, only about one in 60 actually does.
He says that donor screening is put into place in order to start with the safest product possible in case anything goes wrong further down the line.
"There is always the chance of human or computer error, or the sample getting mislabelled," says Vezina.
And while I understand the basis of the argument, straight women and men nowadays probably engage in just as much 'risky behaviour' as gay men.
The fact is, not all men who have sex with men have HIV, and not all straight men don't.
The only way to reverse these old-school prejudices and actually get rid of discrimination is to base donor questions on sexual behaviours.
The Freeman trial could finally be the catalyst we need to advance change, but there’s also a big chance it could be just another step back for the gay rights movement and Canadian society as a whole.