10 signatures reached
To: The Government
Allow gay people equal rights when it comes to blood donation
I want the government to change the current law, where gay people and any men who have had sex with another man are not allowed to save someone’s life through blood donation.
Why is this important?
This is hugely important because through blood donation we can save many people’s lives. It seems that gay men are only not allowed to give blood because of highly alarming rates of HIV within the community. However, this is awfully discriminative, considering thousands of heterosexual people give blood, even though they may also have sex with someone who has an STI. This means therefore that people should be inspected through a case-by-case basis, rather than categorised into not being allowed to give blood just because they simply identify as a homosexual man. I find this outrageous, that the current law states gay men have to not have sex for a whole 12 months in order to give blood. It is said to be reduced to 3 months, however, I deeply believe this is still unfair, as heterosexual men do not have to abstain from having sex if they want to donate at all. I am sure homosexual men want to donate blood just as much as any other man in this world and they should be given the right to do so. We see adverts all over the place saying that someone with a rare blood group needs a blood donation and enlarging the group by including homosexual men (after checkup for any serious STIs) could also help this, as they surely also have rare blood groups that may not be found in anyone else in the population.
