The petition, asking the government to remove a law enacted in 1998 banning the gay community from donating blood, has drawn 540 signatures from lesbians and aims to reach 1,000, the official China Daily reported.

A vast majority of China’s gay and lesbian population face discrimination and stigmatization, and most remain deeply closeted in a highly conservative society. Gay Web sites are often blocked by the government’s Internet firewalls.

China bars potential blood donors from giving blood once they have ticked the gay and lesbian box on the application form, according to a spokeswoman for the Beijing Red Cross Blood Center, who refused to be named citing policy.

“It’s a practical law because the gay community has much higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases. We must take our precautions wisely,” she said. “Even if they lie on the form and say they are straight, everyone’s blood will go through a final screening test for diseases.”

The newspaper report said there are about 30 million gays and lesbians in China, but it did not give numbers on how many of those have HIV/AIDS.

The government and UNAIDS estimate the number of people living with HIV in China is about 700,000, and of those, about 85,000 have AIDS.

The HIV virus that causes AIDS gained a foothold in China largely because of unsanitary blood plasma-buying schemes and tainted transfusions in hospitals.

The government remains sensitive about the disease, regularly cracking down on activists and patients who seek more support and rights.

The Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Tribunal is hearing a complaint filed by Michael Cain who alleges 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.

On Tuesday, Cain’s attorney presented a document prepared in 2001 by the Red Cross’s chief epidemiological advisor, Dr. John Kaldor, advising that “based on current epidemiological evidence, there is no justification for excluding donors on the basis of [whether they have had] oral sex.”

Dr. Kaldor also wrote in his advisory that “it would seem prudent to defer donors who have had male anal sex without a condom…for a donor who has had anal sex only with a condom, the risk is far lower.”

Attorney Peter Tree presented the document during the cross examination of Dr. Brenton Wylie, the primary Red Cross witness. Wylie testified that the document had been presented to the Red Cross in 2001, but that it went ahead with the blanket ban anyway.

At the time Wylie was a member of the Red Cross management committee which made decisions about blood donation exclusions.

On the witness stand Tuesday, Dr. Wylie claimed that men who have sex with other men are thousands of times more likely to have HIV than other people, despite the fact that only 95 men who have sex with men in Tasmania have HIV, an estimated 0.5 percent of that group.

Meanwhile, an Australian AIDS expert told the inquiry Tuesday that it is time for donors to be screened for risky sexual activity, not their partner’s gender.

Bill Bowtell, who was senior advisor to the Australian Health Minister when all gay men were initially barred from blood donations – and is widely seen as the architect of Australia’s successful response to HIV/AIDS – told the inquiry that advances in blood testing and the growing need for safe blood mean it is in the public interest to allow blood donation from low-risk gay men.

He added that the growing heterosexual HIV epidemic in the Asia Pacific region poses a risk to the Australian blood supply unless heterosexuals are screened for unsafe sexual activity.

“We have a very strong and robust system which we can change to reduce risk, increase the volume of blood and remove unnecessary prejudice and discrimination,” he said.

The hearing, which began last week, continues.

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

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.