No, there are a series of screening questions that rule out high-risk donors (gay men, IV drug users, and travelers to high/risk areas are disqualified from donating). All blood is tested regardless.
If you are gay, they don't want you to donate blood. The problem is that if you are, say, at work and they do a blood drive and you say "I can't. Sorry." that potentially outs you to your coworkers that you are gay or have some other issue that disqualifies your blood.
In practice, they will let you donate and then mark it for destruction so you can hide the fact from your coworkers that you don't qualify. (Or they did at one time.)
This was a big issue in the US military during the "don't ask, don't tell" era where they would throw you out if they knew, but official policy was to encourage you to just remain closeted. Being outed as gay was career ending if you were career military at that time. Blood drives are common in the military. They had to have some mechanism to honor the "don't ask, don't tell" policy and let you keep hiding your sexual orientation.
"The problem is that if you are, say, at work and they do a blood drive and you say "I can't. Sorry." that potentially outs you to your coworkers that you are gay or have some other issue that disqualifies your blood."
I never heard about that as a concern, and I have to dismiss that as silly, given the many reasons why you can be disqualified. I mean, you could just have low iron or some other minor health issue.
What I was alluding to is that some people feel it is not acceptable or just to have a blanket exclusion of men who have sex with men. I can't imagine that your answers to the questionaire are allowed to be shared with anyone though.
I've never heard of anyone being offended by the exclusion of people who have spent time in Africa or Europe though.
It wouldn't be directly shared with your employer. But if everyone is there and you decline to participate in giving blood, it can point to information about you that you don't want people to know.
Whether you did or did not have some procedure done is definitely private medical information in Europe. There is no way for them to know whether I did or did not participate - maybe through the on site doctor if that is the one doing the procedure, but they're bound by very serious regulation to keep their mouths shut. Regardless, me not wanting to go would be a perfectly normal thing as well.
Blood donation tends to not be treated in the US as a medical procedure. It tends to be treated as a feel good community event. I'm a bit weirded out to have that reflected back to me as a medical procedure, though it certainly is. We don't quite seem to get that fact in some important way.
We're basically savages in huts over here about some things.
When I had a corporate job, lower level employees were instructed to keep their mouths shut and not tell everyone they were being promoted or whatever until it could be officially announced. Meanwhile, it was common for more than one middle manager type to drop by their cubicle to loudly congratulate them and make small talk, clearly trying to get in good with someone whose skills and such they might need.
I guess we were all supposed to be stupid or something and be incapable of inferring they had been promoted or something.
This was at a Fortune 500 company, so "the best of the best, sir." And it drove me crazy for so many reasons.
My mother is a German immigrant who came from a family of twelve kids. I am routinely shocked and appalled at how bad so many people are at thinking about the larger social landscape and how this will be viewed by others and what knock on effects it may have.
That type of thing seems to be shockingly common in the US and probably plays a large role in a lot of our social issues.
