This month, San Jose State University President, Jon Whitmore, decided to continue a two year old policy of suspending all blood drives on campus. The reason? Because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bans men who have had sex with other men (MSM) from donating blood. According to SJSU, this violates the University’s policy against sexual orientation discrimination. The implications of this decision are quite shocking.

First and foremost, the suspension will cost lives. Someone in the United States needs blood every two seconds. That means that 38,000 blood donations are needed daily to meet the demand. The Stanford Blood Bank near the SJSU campus is already facing a blood shortage—even to critical levels—for most blood types. Given that 20% of Stanford’s blood supply comes from students, it is likely that SJSU’s policy has contributed to this shortage. Bottom line: every donation SJSU’s policy deters, equals three lives lost that could have been saved.

Additionally, the FDA ban SJSU opposes actually saves lives. Undisputed scientific evidence confirms that male on male sex yields a dramatic increase in the presence and transmission of infectious diseases including HIV, Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C. Consider the following statistics from the FDA:

Men who have had sex with men since 1977 have an HIV prevalence (the total number of cases of a disease that are present in a population at a specific point in time) 60 times higher than the general population, 800 times higher than first time blood donors and 8000 times higher than repeat blood donors (American Red Cross). Men who have had sex with men account for the largest single group of blood donors who are found HIV positive by blood donor testing.

Blood donor testing—although extremely sensitive—still cannot detect all infected donors. This is especially true with HIV, which often does not manifest itself in the blood until up to six months after infection. Because the FDA has not found any other method of reliably identifying MSM who are not at increased risk of HIV, it opted for a complete MSM donor ban to protect others from infection.

Finally, the FDA policy does not discriminate based on sexual orientation. The policy on its face applies to conduct—men who have sex with other men—not status. In fact, the policy also prohibits donations from other persons who have engaged in other potentially risky conduct such as intravenous drug abuse, sex for money, or travel to certain countries. And notably, the FDA does not ban donations from women who have sex with other women. So what is behind SJSU’s decision?

SJSU’s application of its nondiscrimination policy to blood drives reveals that it ultimately seeks to make sexual conduct itself a protected class. The ramifications of this are staggering. Under this interpretation, every nondiscrimination policy that includes “sexual orientation” would become a license to engage in any sexual conduct whatsoever. Sexual desire would trump the rule of law and the safety or health of others. Moreover, this interpretation would obliterate religious freedom because any religious group seeking to enforce Biblical standards of morality would automatically violate the nondiscrimination policy. This is especially true on college campuses where student organizations cannot even exist if they do not agree to abide by the school’s nondiscrimination policy. But this is what the advocates for the homosexual agenda and their partners in academia have wanted all along. SJSU has simply made it clear that it will push this agenda at any cost.

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