Want to keep those blood-sucking phlebotomists at bay? Toss out that cumbersome old necklace made of garlic cloves and just tell 'em you're gay! (Too bad gays don't come in cloves, eh?)

As reported by the AP last week, the FDA has reiterated it's ban on "men who have sex with men" (MSM) giving blood. The ban was first instituted at the height of the AIDS epidemic, when HIV was considered a "gay plague," but its continued "enforcement" (inasmuch as a ban relying on the truthful disclosure by blood donors of personal information publicly disapproved of can be said to be practically enforceable) reflects not so much the reality of the demographics of HIV/AIDS as continued stereotyping of gay sexual behavior and general scapegoating of gays. (Sorry to get all gay on your asses, but it's true.)

Statistics from the CDC (which are merely estimates and may reflect in part the higher rate of self-identifying gays who actually get tested for HIV regularly), put the number of new MSM HIV cases in the US for 2005 (the most recent year for which information's available) at a little over 21,000. Hetero cases, and cases involving intravenous drug use and blood transfusions, were estimated at 23,000.

Whatever your take on the numbers, it's pretty clear that HIV/AIDS is no longer confined to the "high-risk" "party-n-play" gay community.

There are two issues here, of course.

One is the practice of excluding honest, conscientious, self-identified gays from entering society on the same terms as honest, conscientious self-identified straights, a struggle that is going on on several fronts.

The other is a safe blood supply.

The question is, can a ban that relies on truthful disclosure of the intimate details of one's sexual activities be effective? Particularly wherever donors are paid for their time?

In this it might be instructive to look at the military's Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) policy. You are penalized not so much for your sexuality as for being honest about it. This is also what so mortally offends those opposed to gay marriage. It is a public declaration. Better, in their eyes, to lie and cheat in the shadows than to come out in the light of day.

But I'm not sure it's so wise to let heterosexuals who get their freak on off the hook here. Even in the CDC's statistics, heterosexuals are asterisked. The only heterosexual behavior that is mentioned is "high-risk": "heterosexual contact with a person known to have, or to be at high risk for, HIV infection."

But surely there are heterosexuals who are not aware of their partners' status.

Adding that asterisk to heterosexual cases speaks volumes. The CDC is effectively saying that only those knowingly engaging in "high-risk" behavior—i.e., with a known "high-risk" partner—contract HIV.

Even the categories the CDC uses to label the infected smack of social stigma, moral judgment, and bad science.

Not that I'm against social stigma and moral judgment, mind you, although I do tend to like my earth more or less round and my water to boil at roughly 100ºC. But then I am a creature of habit, and science tends to agree with my weakness for predictable results.

But as for the beneficial influence of social stigma: in this case, I'm not convinced that conflating gender-preference or sexuality with sexual appetite or practices serves any greater purpose than just stigmatizing a category of people. I don't think it makes the blood supply any safer, personally. So science might be more useful here than social stigma.

Hey, here's an idea. This'll sound nuts, I know, but we should strive for public policies based on, inasmuch as humanly possible, factual data. And public institutions committed to transparency.

That's the greater debate around the issue of "gay rights" that so riles some. That's what gay marriage is about. It's not about whether or not there have been "gay marriages" in the past, it's about whether or not we, as a society, will acknowledge them openly. To do so is for the greater good. It advances the cause of greater inclusion, of the opportunity to participate in society's rights and responsibilities, rather than living outside them.

Policies like the FDA's (whose chief is appointed by the administration) and the military's (whose chiefs are likewise appointed, or advance according to criteria laid out by the Commander-in-Chief) and those who promulgate them seek not so much to secure our blood supply or freedom as to perpetuate a code, based on ideology at best, blind prejudice at worst, the effect of which is deleterious to the ends they're pledged to seek and serve.

Take the military's Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) policy. Whatever you might feel about the vulnerability of straight-identifying soldiers exposed to the lecherousness of their depraved, sex-crazed predatory gay brothers-in-arms, no army that has allowed gays to serve openly (and there are currently over twenty-four nations whose armies do) has had any trouble with it.

The UK lifted its ban in 2000. According to a recent story in the New York Times: "Since the British military began allowing homosexuals to serve in the armed forces ... none of its fears — about harassment, discord, blackmail, bullying or an erosion of unit cohesion or military effectiveness — have come to pass, according to the Ministry of Defense, current and former members of the services and academics specializing in the military. The biggest news about the policy, they say, is that there is no news. It has for the most part become a nonissue."

Israel lifted its ban way back in 1993. An exhaustive study, “Homosexuality and the Israel Defense Forces; Did Lifting the Gay Ban Undermine Military Performance?” by Aaron Belkin and Melissa Levitt, published in Armed Forces and Society, vol. 27, no. 4, 2001, concluded:

In our comprehensive search for published evidence and our interviews with all known experts on homosexuality in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), we were not able to find any data suggesting that Israel’s decision to lift its gay ban undermined operational effectiveness, combat readiness, unit cohesion or morale.

But as Human Rights Watch has pointed out, "The Pentagon has never produced empirical support for its insistence that permitting open or sexually active gay men and lesbians to serve in the military would undermine 'unit cohesion.'" This despite, maybe because of the fact that "the military experiences of other nations disprove the premise that open homosexuals impair military performance."

And that is really what Americans of all stripes—gay, straight, or just plain freaky—should be concerned about, because ignoring the data is this administration's modus operandi, and however well it has served the rich-and richer patrons of this dumb-and-dumber administration, it has not served the rest of us, or the cause of democracy so well.

The gay blood ban—the lifetime gay blood ban, no less—is just another front in an assault on science and social values, in favor of the fractious anti-social values of the party (and perhaps parties) in power. It ignores fact for inflammatory fictions. And it is of a piece with the irrational fear of gay families and the ban on gays serving openly in the military, a policy that's having a real and detrimental impact in the so-called War on Terror, which those who've crowed the loudest about bearing any burden for are chiefly responsible for undermining.

Irrational means seldom serve as a basis for rational society. They more often lay the groundwork for a more fractious, fearful, and irrational one, don't they?

Hmm. Methinks that might just be the point.