(Hobart, Australia) A human rights hearing in Australia has been told that a ban on gay men donating blood is discriminatory and should be lifted.

Michael Cain filed a complaint alleging the Red Cross is violating his civil rights by refusing to accept the blood of gays. Cain’s complaint says that screening of prospective blood donors should be based on the safety of sexual practices, not sexual identity.

At a hearing in Hobart, Associate Professor Anne Mitchell, a social researcher, testified that only a small proportion of the gay community engages in risky sex.

But Red Cross attorney Jeremy Ruskin said that male-to-male sex is the riskiest activity for HIV and accounts for 86 percent of newly acquired infections.

Ruskin said if Cain’s complaint were accepted it would amount to an experiment with the blood supply.

“We are talking about infection and death,” he said.

Ruskin then asked Mitchell about the high rate of newly acquired HIV cases.

She replied that it was because HIV had already infected the gay community.

Cain’s lawyer, Peter Tree, told the rights tribunal that the donor ban was “’straightforward, almost text-book direct discrimination.”

Tree reminded the tribunal that gay sex was not illegal in Tasmania and the law prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, or lawful sexual activity.

He also told the tribunal that since the ban was imposed at the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, scientific tests had enabled detection of HIV antibodies in donated blood.

Tree said that to eliminate a particular group people beforehand was not merely discriminatory, but illogical and medically flawed.

The hearing continues.

The United States and Canada also bar gay men from donating blood.