Everybody knows that I’m gay, it comes with the job and the territory and I’m proud to be gay and to be out but it wasn’t always so easy. Coming out is not the one-off event that most people think, its not a case of today I’m in the ‘closet’, tomorrow I’m going to tell people that I’m gay. I wish it was that simple but its not, coming out is something I’ll be doing for the rest of my life, or at least until it doesn’t matter anymore. Sometimes I’ll meet someone and they will ask if I have a girlfriend, and I’ll come out to them, other times its just presumed I’m straight and again I’ll find ways of coming out. Sometimes I won’t bother, its not like I walk into a room and declare to everyone my sexuality.

Like most of us, I was working part-time during my first year at College, I had been in my job for little over a month when the blood service arrived on site for a blood collection drive. We were quite a close team, I was getting to know everyone quite well but still the subject of my sexuality had never come up, and at the age of 18 I wasn’t particularly interested in addressing it outside my social circle. Everyone in my team decided that day to go and donate blood, apart from one of us; she’d had her bellybutton pierced a few weeks earlier. To cut a long story short, I wasn’t allowed to donate. “Are you a man who has ever had sex with another man, anal or oral sex, with or without a condom or other form of protectorate?” I was one of those men, I didn’t know then that I would be permanently banned, but then I also didn’t realise the questioning that was to follow from my fellow team mates. Why not…? Gay…?

I was able to tell them I was gay without any problems, to be honest they were more shocked at the ban than me being gay. Looking back, however it angers me that it was the blood service which forced my coming out to my team. Coming out should always be a personal thing, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all scenario. For some it’s the hardest thing they will ever do, with others it’s easy, and sadly for too many its never done at all.

This is why I’m leading NUS’s Donation not Discrimination campaign, joining with students across the UK on Thursday November 2nd to protest the permanent ban on gay and bisexual men from donating blood. For too many coming out is made even more difficult by the stigma and discrimination levelled at them from people just like the blood service. HIV/Aids is not a gay disease, it’s just made by some to feel that way.

In the early 80’s HIV was unknown, nobody knew what it was, what it did, and how it spread, it was even dubbed Homosexual Immune-deficiency Virus (HIV) at the onset. Times have changed, and we know huge amounts more about it than we did then. We also know that its not just gay people who can get it. Its all creeds, all colours, all social backgrounds. HIV/Aids does not discriminate and neither should the blood service. The LGBT community knows more about the risks of HIV/Aids than ever before and it’s time to stop undermining sexual health messages which talk about low-medium-high risk activities with the blood service’s message that says all homosexual activity is high risk, protected or otherwise.

There are many other reasons why I, like thousands of others, believe that this ban is unjustified. You will be able to read more about those arguments on our website www.officeronline.co.uk/lgbt. There you will also be able to get information on how to take part in the day of action in your area, you’ll also find resources to use, a model press release, info on what is happening around the world and lots more. We really hope you will consider taking part in the day, the more that do, the greater chance we all have of getting this deeply discriminatory ban overturned. And you don’t have to be LGBT to get involved. This is discrimination, and we welcome anyone who will challenge it! There are many ways in which you can take part, from organising a demo or a stall, collecting signatures for our petition to giving blood if current regulations permit, taking the place of a gay or bisexual man at the blood donation clinic.

So put it in your diaries now, November 2nd 2006. Donation not Discrimination Day of Action. If you want to get involved or would like more information please feel to contact me at scott.cuthbertson@nus.org.uk, let’s assign this policy to the dustbin of homophobic history forever!

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