In 2005, a complaint was lodged with the Tasmanian State Anti-Discrimination Tribunal against the Red Cross. The complaint was filed by Michael Cain, a young Tasmanian man, who claimed the Red Cross was unfairly screening out men who had sex with men from giving blood. At the International AIDS Society Conference in Sydney this month Michael Cain led a protest on July 23 in front of the Darling Harbour Convention Centre to call for restrictions to be based on unsafe sex not sexual orientation.
Protesters held up a large banner that declared ‘HIV is transmitted by unsafe sex not gay sex: End the Red Cross’ Bloody Homophobia.’ They also handed out flyers explaining their concerns.
‘The old policy of barring donations from all sexually-active gay and bisexual men including those who have safe sex, and allowing all heterosexuals to donate even if they have unsafe sex, is outdated, discriminatory and limits the amount of safe blood available for transfusion,’ Mr Cain said.
‘In cases of sexually-transmitted HIV, infection is due to unsafe sex not gender of sexual partner, making it important that blood donors are screened for the former, not the latter,’ Cain explained.
Mr Cain told OUTinPerth why the conference was an appropriate place for a protest: ‘What we hope to achieve today is to start a debate about the importance of choosing people on the basis of safe sex. By doing this, our aim is to increase the number of donors we have and in effect the amount of lives we can save in Australia. In the end, the reason we are here today is the people at this conference are AIDS specialists and if anyone is going to help move this along and get action taken, it is going to be people who understand the facts and the relevance of what we are trying to do.’
Tasmanian gay rights activist Rodney Croome was also amongst the protesters. He said ‘It’s very important that there’s a debate about gay blood donation amongst those people who make our AIDS policies both nationally and globally. The fear of HIV transmission is one of the main issues of concern when it comes to sexually active gay and bisexual men donating blood. So, what we are here to do is to raise the issue amongst people who have come from around the world to talk about HIV policy.’
The Red Cross was not able to comment on the protest or their current restrictions on donating blood due to the current legal proceedings.
