Reply #15: American Red Cross will defer you for a year, if you have had sex with [View All]

someone considered high-risk, but men who've had sex with another man even once are deferred forever -- so, depending on the exact questions asked by the blood center, you may or may not be disqualified. (They each have slightly different guidelines -- I'm not sure how strict the government is.)

It's stupid, really...I, as a woman, could have unprotected sex with hundreds of men, and so long as I never asked them if they'd ever had sex with a man, I could remain in the blood pool. However, a man who's been in a monogamous relationship with another man since 1970 -- well before HIV/AIDS showed up in the blood supply -- and brings in proof of multiple consecutive negative HIV tests, can never donate ever.