Infectious Until Proven Celibate… seriously?

The deliberately discriminatory draconian blood ban is how Canadian Blood Services (CBS) chooses to kill people every single day. Their present policy states that men who have sex with men (msm) must practice total abstinence of sexual contact for three months to be granted the privilege to donate. This also applies to trans women who have not had gender affirming surgery who have sex with men. The ban ignores advances in screening which are now able to detect cases as new infections within nine days of exposure.

    PrEP, short for pre-exposure prophylaxis, is a drug which according to the CDC reduces the risk of contracting HIV from sexual practices by 99% as opposed to those not on the drug. This drug is heavily marketed at msm and trans individuals and apps like Grindr encourage its use by adding "on PrEP" as an add on to your HIV status option, where you can also add your last date tested. While none of these boxes are mandatory to fill out, it does support the information from the Unifor website stating that msm (and presumably trans folks as well) are more likely to know when they're been exposed that their heterosexual counterparts. Despite this CBS still refuses to make their questions related to behaviour, preferring to run on assumptions; a monogamous gay couple is not allowed to donate but a woman can ride a new disposable douche daily, provided she has a vagina, and still donate.

    It's pretty sad that the Umbrella Academy did a better job of discriminating blood donation based on behaviour of a man who has sex with men. It was based on behaviour. Imagine. But no, we instead are given the Luther treatment of having our blood being basically inhuman.

It's pretty obvious that people are just plain homophobic. Read the CBS frequently asked questions and try sifting through their political paragraphs for an actual answer to the question that doesn't boil down to "gay blood is dirty, we ignore science that doesn't support this." Having the Student Union Building choose to support this was disrespectful to every person who saw it had to laugh it off. Hatred based discrimination has no place in a build that's supposed to be for ALL students. Take the hate home. Ninian's Cathedral is an on campus location that isn't part of the campus itself, it's part of the community of Antigonish. A community which is far less likely to walk into the heart of campus to donate than they are to come from the sidewalk to donate. More donors and the school engages in a positive way with the town. Everybody wins and the place not for the gays is the church once more. If we can't have human levels of respect you can at least let us have a laugh.

Nobody should have to walk past a reminder of ignorance reducing them from a who to a what.