Anyone who can answer no to all the questions on the Red Cross Online survey (see end of article) can, according to the Red Cross Blood Service website, donate blood. However, in Tasmania, questions have been raised as to whether the Red Cross does not have additional restrictions, most notably against blood donations from sexually active homosexual men.
Queer Students on Campus Society Hobart Branch President Brad Harvey reported:
‘We were told that we were not able to donate blood because of our sexual practices. When we received this response we informed the Red Cross that according to an online assessment that is part of their latest media campaign to attract blood donors, that we were indeed eligible to donate blood. We were told that a doctor from the Red Cross would be in contact with us shortly to discuss this further. A doctor from the Red Cross did not return our call’.
Mr. Harvey continued, ‘It is worrying that an organisation such as the Red Cross is not able to make a rudimentary distinction between safe and unsafe sex for men who engage in sexual activities with other men when there is however quite a clear distinction in sexual practices for men who engage in sexual activities with women. A heterosexual man can have a one night stand with a different complete stranger every weekend for a year and provided it is safe sex he can donate blood with no delay. If a homosexual man engages in safe sex once with his partner only once he is not able to donate blood for at least a year’.
‘Red Cross’ latest media campaign to recruit blood donors is painfully deceptive, not to mention offensive, and on behalf of GLBTI university students across Tasmania I call on Red Cross to retract and rethink this advertising campaign. We will be calling on the Australian Communications and Media Authority to intervene because this appears to us to be a case of false and misleading advertising’.
The Red Cross online survey asks:
- Are you under 16?
- Over 70?
- Had a tattoo recently?
- Pregnant?
- Recently given birth?
- Have a serious heart condition?
- Low in iron?
- Lived in the UK for over six months between 1980 and 1996?
