Should The Male Gay Community Be Allowed To Give Blood?

I had some free time down in Akron, Oh. a few years ago and noticed a blood donation trailer set up in a parking lot. I decided I would do the honorable thing and give a little. This is a big deal for someone like me who despises the feeling of a needle penetrating my skin.
Anyway, upon entering the trailer I was handed a questionaire. Upon answering all the questions, I was told my blood would not be needed. WHAT? What about all the ads I keep hearing on the radio about the desperate need for blood? “Oh, we need the blood”, the person said, “just not YOUR blood”.
I spent a few years in Europe in the mid-eighties and there exists a rule in the U.S. that anyone spending more than a few months in Europe during that period of time could not give blood. It has something to do with mad cow disease or something.
I can, therefore, relate to the descrimination felt by the male homosexual community out there. I suppose many of you reading this don’t realize that if a man, any man, has sexual relations one time in the last eleven years with another man, he is not permitted to give blood in the U.S. or Canada. That’s right.
If I was a homosexual man I would be outraged at this; especially if I lived in Canada, of all places. The relationship between man and, well, man, is completely normal and natural, isn’t it? Why all the closet homophobia, Canada? Eh? Go all the way with it. Show the world just how righteous you really are.
Maybe there’s more to this than meets the eye. Maybe it’s not the healthy lifestyle we’ve been told it is. Why else would a certain sexual behaviour be singled out for descrimination like this?
No matter what the case may be, this discrepancy cannot be allowed to stand. Descrimination is descrimination, in whatever size, shape, or form it comes in. Your government has targeted you, gay man. What are you gonna do about it?