Flipping through this week’s issue of the Gay & Lesbian Times, you’ll notice we’ve devoted several pages to the current ban prohibiting men who have sex with men (MSM) from donating blood. Not only have we reported on this issue in our San Diego news section (page 14), but Delores Jacobs, The Center’s chief executive officer, has written a commentary on the topic (page 40). Given San Diego’s current blood shortage, we too felt compelled to editorialize on this longstanding discriminatory policy against gay and bisexual men.

Taking our personal feelings out of the equation and assessing what is best for overall public health, does prohibiting MSM from donating blood reduce the risk of HIV contaminating the blood supply?

Two tests are performed on donated blood to screen for HIV. The first is a common antibody test. According to David Oh, chief medical officer of the San Diego Blood Bank, the window period is about 22 days. That is, a person infected with HIV may test negative for HIV antibodies up to 22 days from exposure. The second is nucleic acid testing, which looks directly for the nucleic acid of the virus. This has about a 10-day window period.

Current donor guidelines prohibit any male “who has had sexual contact with another male, even once, since 1977” from donating blood. With current screening technology, this policy is grossly outdated and should be amended.

Let’s take the discriminatory language out and address the real health risks that should govern public policy: Anyone who has engaged in high-risk sexual behavior within these window periods should refrain from donating blood, including our straight counterparts.

The face of HIV/AIDS is changing in America. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the proportion of AIDS cases among adult and adolescent women in the United States has more than tripled since 1985, with African-American and Hispanic women accounting for the largest increase. Although the two groups taken together represent less than one-fourth of all women in the United States, they accounted for 80 percent of all AIDS cases reported among women in the year 2000.

As HIV infection continues to disproportionately impact Hispanic and African-American communities, and Hispanic and African-American women in particular, will these communities soon be labeled high-risk groups and then be blacklisted as well?

Fortunately, the federal government no longer discriminates (at least in theory) based on race. Discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, however, is still commonplace. Take the Defense of Marriage Act, for example, which bans same-sex marriage at the federal level, or the nation’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, as Jacobs cites in her column.

And the list goes on. Just this week, the president’s Federal Marriage Amendment failed in the U.S. House of Representatives. A victory for the GLBT community, yes, but a cutting reminder of our president’s priorities.

There’s currently a blood shortage in San Diego and at more than half the blood centers across the country. Yet despite what the San Diego Blood Bank is calling “dangerously low blood levels” in our area, a large portion of our community cannot donate.

In March, the FDA heard testimony from the American Red Cross, the American Association of Blood Banks and America’s Blood Centers that the ban on blood from MSM is unnecessary because blood-screening methods are more advanced and accurate today than when the ban was first implemented.

If the FDA is truly concerned about public health, they’ll listen and repeal this counterproductive ban.