Sanguine

Sanguine, is a campaign that's on a mission to tackle the one year blood donation ban for gay men in Britain. The LGBT community movement has been massive and the fight for equality has been a great success, but there's still a lot to do, a lot to fight for to be treated as a equal citizens.

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Update: After coming home from an audition today, whilst being a little disappointed I received the best news ever regarding the campaign. ITV are interested in a broadcast based on the campaign and the aim of tackling the ban! This is great progress and it means a brighter future for the campaign and to tackle this one year ban, thankfully this day has gone from a disappointing one to one of the best days ever!! Keep your eyes peeled.

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Yesterday was a very busy but successful day! I and the amazing fixers team managed to film the video for the campaign, keep and eye out and watch this space as you'll be able to watch the video soon and get ready for some hard campaigning against this blood ban👍

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Welcome

Welcome to Sanguine. If you’ve read the bio of this blog, you’d understand what the aim of this campaign is. I hope you feel as passionate about this matter as I do, as it is, on top of other actions against the community, another prejudice act against the LGBT community.

For years, multiple gay men have not been allowed to donate blood due to being a high risk group for HIV, until 2011. In 2011 gay men were finally given the right to donate blood as the lifetime ban was lifted, but…the ban was lifted from a lifetime…to a year. This still isn’t good enough, as citizens living in 2016 we should recognise the advancements of screening capabilities which allow us to detect HIV sooner, which means that there is no need for this year long wait. Not only that, research has found that in 2014 an estimated 103,700 people in the UK live with HIV, and only an estimated 44% of that population are homosexual men. That’s only 45,000 out of the potential 960,000 registered gay men living within the UK.

May I also state, that a heterosexual can have continous unprotected sex with multiple partners and yet still have the privellige to donate blood, despite the high risk they’re at of attracting an STD. A gay male, can still be opposite to the heterosexual individual and practice safe sex, yet still be revoked of the freedom to donate blood. How is this fair? This isn’t equality.

Blood that is donated towards the NHS is always tested anyway, so how does the one year ban for homosexual men make a difference? Surely, if a homosexual man’s blood was cleared of any infection, then there is no difference and no issue.

As stated in my campaign film that was filmed earlier on today “We don’t want to spread HIV, we want to help….We want to save lives”

I’m a healthy gay man, and I want the freedom to donate blood.