The Federal Drug Administration recently proposed changes to blood donation policy to replace the deferral for sexually active gay and bisexual men with an individual risk assessment applied to all potential blood donors regardless of sexual orientation or gender. This move from an identity-based deferral to one based on a potential donor’s recent sexual activities is a transformative change in the FDA’s management of blood safety and marks the end of the overtly discriminatory policy that has been in place for 35 years.
The FDA’s capitulation should be heralded as a significant if long overdue victory in LGBTQ+ civil rights. Instead, misconceptions regarding the basis for the now discarded identity-based deferrals, the fitful way the FDA updated the policy over the past decade, rhetoric
