Ending the ban of gay men giving blood - a liberal cause in waiting

6.51.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Wed 21st Jul 2010

George Gosling

A new group of Facebook is picking up numbers and making itself known. It is called 'We Want the Gay Blood Ban Debate' and its speedy growth is impressive for a specifically Lib Dem campaign. It's a campaign to try and force a debate at conference about the restrictions on who is fit to give blood.

Many people are not aware of the fact gay men can't give blood. I am from personal experience. The week after the local nurse talked to my sixth form, a group of a dozen or more of us went to give blood together. For a number of years then I gave blood every six months to the day. Then one time I filled in the form and ticked 'yes' on the question: 'Have you ever had protected or unprotected sex with another man?' I was then told they were not allowed to take my blood. In addition to which, I am now in a long-term, monogamous relationship with a straight woman, and she is no longer allowed to give blood either - despite the fact we have both been tested.

The National Blood Service puts me and my partner into a category they describe as having 'a particularly high risk of carrying blood-borne viruses'. As they say, this rests on 'specific sexual behaviour… not on sexuality'. So celibate gay men are fine, the kind of moral tightrope that is normally the territory the Church. Moreover, this category of 'specific behaviour' is wide enough to include every non-celibate gay or bisexual man and his partner, but narrow enough to not cover straight men who sleep around unprotected.

Recently we have seen the end of blanket bans of gay men giving blood in France, Russia and South Africa. Here there is talk of changing it to a ban based on behaviour in the last six months. But considering donors are invited to give blood every six months (not more often as it is, to pardon the pun, a draining experience) this would be a rolling ban in place of a blanket ban.

Moreover, we Lib Dems are generally very strong on this issue. Only last month in Nottingham, Cllr Alex Foster put forward a motion celebrating blood donations but regretting 'that the blood service in the UK discriminates unfairly against different groups in our society including gay men and bisexual men'. The Council's Labour leadership removed this reference from the motion.

Of course, we are now in a coalition government with Nick Clegg as deputy to Prime Minister David Cameron - both of whom spoke out against the blanket ban in the run up to the election. Cameron said of the ban, in an interview with the Independent earlier this year: 'Logic would dictate that it's time to change.' Meanwhile, reversing the ban was one of Clegg's four key gay rights reforms proposed in his interview with Attitude magazine.

It is surprising then that a motion raising this debate, by Cllr Chris Ward and Dij Davies, should be rejected for the first Lib Dem conference after the formation of a Cameron-Clegg government. There were many issues on which we disagreed and have since found common ground. It would be absurd if that were to happen at the expense of issues like this one, where there was progressive common ground to start with.

http://www.libdemvoice.org/author/george-gosling/