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The activists who lobbied for decades against the ban on blood donations from the queer community can finally celebrate the removal of this stigma – a relic of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. By Hannah Bambra.
End of the gay blood donation ban
When Jack Marozzi heard the Red Cross urgently calling for blood in 2014, he immediately started researching how he could help. Marozzi was young and healthy but found he was ineligible because of his sexuality.
“It made me feel like we were dirty or that they’d rather let people die than take blood from gay people, even if they could show that it could be safe.”
The first reported case of AIDS in Australia was in October 1982 and the first death recorded about nine months after that. “Bury your friends in the morning, protest in the afternoon and dance all night” was the infamous mantra that carried the queer community through the crisis.
By the mid 1990s, the prevalence of HIV transmission through blood had fundamentally shifted. The rollout of widespread testing, stricter donor screening protocols and improvements in the processing of blood products curtailed what had once been a major source of new infections.
In 2014, Australia also introduced pre-exposure prophylaxis (known as PrEP) into the community. PrEP is a medication, taken daily or on demand, to prevent the contraction of HIV. Despite these advances, it has taken decades for policy reform to catch up and allow gay and bisexual men, trans women who have sex with men, and sex workers to donate blood products.
“It really was a case of these bans being in place from a time when we didn’t have the science or the technology to screen blood and make sure it was safe,” says Marozzi. “The science changed but the policy didn’t.”
From July 14, the blanket rules that have excluded a lot of people from donating blood and plasma because of their sexual activity will finally be lifted across Australia.
“Blood safety is and always will be our top priority, but we know the current donation rules have been very difficult for many people in the LGBTQIA+ community,” says Jo Pink, chief medical officer, Australian Red Cross Lifeblood. While the rules were put in place “to ensure a safe blood supply in the past”, she says, “we know that they’ve contributed to the stigma faced by the community”.
Rodney Croome, who led the campaign to decriminalise homosexuality in Tasmania in 1997, has spent at least three decades protesting what is sometimes referred to as the “gay blood ban”. He was involved in the anti-discrimination case against the ban in the state in 2005 and helped set up the Let Us Give campaign as the Covid-19 pandemic led to shortages in supply.
Over the past 30 or more years, he has seen the sexual abstinence period required decrease from one year to three months. “I also saw public opinion transform from trepidation about gay blood donation to strong support,” he says.
“But what never changed was the shame and outrage young gay men felt when they were turned away from blood donation, or the difficulties closeted gay employees felt when they had to invent a reason for not participating in a workplace blood drive.”
According to the Kirby Institute, diagnoses in heterosexuals accounted for 30 per cent of all new HIV diagnoses in 2022, yet heterosexual people have never been subjected to the same degree of scrutiny of their sexual history as LGBTQIA+ individuals when looking to donate blood. It also noted that HIV diagnoses remain very low among female sex workers and people who inject drugs.
The new policy in Australia will be to ask all donors whether they’ve had anal sex. If they have, they must also confirm whether they’ve been in a monogamous relationship for at least six months. Donors who’ve had anal sex with new or multiple partners must still wait three months before donating blood products.
Australia is relatively late to lifting bans on blood donations from the queer community. New Zealand started easing its rules against gay people donating in 2020, the Netherlands in 2021 and Canada in 2022. France announced its policy reform in 2015, which came into effect fully by 2019.
Australia will be the first country, however, to remove all sexual activity-based restrictions on plasma donations, except for people who have HIV-positive partners.
It’s estimated this new legislation will allow plasma donations from 626,500 Australians who were previously ineligible.
In 2021, the Kirby Institute conducted the first national survey in partnership with the University of Queensland and Lifeblood, with an aim to increase the donor pool in Australia and ensure ongoing availability of blood products. They found the Australian health system requires 33,000 donations every week and one in three Australians will require a transfusion in their lifetime.
Jo Pink says Australia’s need for blood and plasma is increasing at “record levels”.
“Plasma is now the donation type most needed by Australian patients, which means this change comes at an important time, as we anticipate an extra 24,000 donors and 95,000 extra donations of plasma to be made each year with the removal of sexual activity wait times.”
Georgia Carter, a 28-year-old from Tamworth, is a regular plasma recipient and a member of the LGBTQIA+ community. She lives with a condition called common variable immunodeficiency, which, contrary to the name, affects only one in about 25,000 people. The disease means Carter has an insufficient number of infection-fighting antibodies – from childhood, she has experienced multiple episodes of life-threatening septicaemia, drug-resistant infections, and chronic lung, sinus, gastrointestinal and kidney infections.
“The plasma donations are what gives me an immune system that is capable of fighting off both life-threatening and chronic infections,” she says. “Before treatment, my quality of life was awful. Plasma donors have given me a life I never could have dreamed of.”
The chief executive of Living Positive Victoria, Richard Keane, says while the overall changes are welcome, “the continued ban on people who have sex with people living with HIV does not reflect HIV prevention science”.
“If someone living with HIV is virally suppressed, there is zero risk of sexual transmission to a negative partner,” he says. “The partners of people living with HIV are often among the most informed and proactive when it comes to sexual health. We care for ourselves and our communities.
“Maintaining deferrals under these circumstances not only ignores science but reinforces stigma and structural discrimination, perpetuating harmful myths about the safety of our relationships.”
Community views on risk and safety are often considered a legacy of how our country addressed the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Australia ran some of the most stigmatising public awareness campaigns in the world. The “Grim Reaper” advertisement is widely regarded as having done more harm than good in terms of supporting public health.
Activists say that the time it has taken for this legislation to change is a consequence of decades of discrimination.
“The delay reflected stigma and the general lag between evidence and policy reform,” says Dash Heath-Paynter, chief executive of Health Equity Matters, which has been leading advocacy in this field. “While the original 1980s policies made sense given limited knowledge, maintaining blanket exclusions decades later became harder to justify.
“Beyond the 95,000 additional plasma donations annually, this sends a powerful message about valuing evidence over prejudice. For our community, it’s both practical – finally being able to save lives – and symbolic recognition of full citizenship and worth.”
The predominant response from those newly eligible has been relief. Rodney Croome says it resonates most with older gay men who gave blood until it was banned in the 1980s. “It’s as if the fear and loathing directed at them because of HIV has finally lifted, and part of their humanity has been restored,” he says.
Jack Marozzi, who is now 31 years old and finishing a PhD in epidemiology and biostatistics, says young gay and bisexual men are used to extensive screening on their sexual activity and injecting drug use. In order to take PrEP, gay and bisexual men need to undergo testing every three months and answer screening questions about recent sexual activity.
“This is a sector of the community that is very literate in their safety around these issues, so I don’t think it’s going to be a huge challenge,” he says. “I think it’s a good thing that the Therapeutic Goods Association and Lifeblood are committed to the safety of the blood supply through screening processes. This is why we don’t need blanket bans on whole sections of the community.”
Marozzi is looking forward to donating plasma next month, to help people such as Georgia Carter receive the donations they need. “It’s a relief to be seen as who we truly are,” he says. “Not just a risk group but as citizens who want to contribute and want to help save lives.”
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on June 28, 2025 as "Blood, sweat and tears".
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