In early December, after standing in line for hours to give blood, Santa Cruz high school senior Ronnie Childers, 17, was turned away — because he was gay, and that’s against the rules.

Employees from the Red Cross, which was administering the blood drive, told the student that they were required to comply with U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations that prohibit blood donations from men who have had a sexual encounter with another man since 1977.

Since Childers was turned away, the incident has mushroomed into a far bigger debate: As reported in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the student received a barrage of hate mail regarding his sexual orientation; the local school district is considering a moratorium on future blood drives; and a number of the school’s staff want to send letters to state and federal representatives, worried that the FDA will simply ignore the situation.

And unfortunately, the political overtones of ‘the gay issue’ are in danger of eclipsing a very important debate on the threats — or possible lack thereof — to the safety of the national blood supply.

At their core, FDA regulations about blood donors are designed to protect the blood supply, not inherently to slight any particular group. For example, anyone who received a blood transfusion since 1980 in the United Kingdom is barred from donating blood. This is not part of a sinister anti-UK agenda — it’s a measure to protect blood recipients from possible contamination from mad cow disease.

Similarly, there are prohibitions against anyone who has ever been paid for sex, anyone who has used intravenous drugs, anyone who has received an organ transplant in the last 12 months and anyone who was born in (or has lived in) a number of African countries where HIV is near-pandemic. These regulations are indeed discriminatory — against people who, according to the FDA, are statistically more likely to have HIV.

But many have questioned those statistics as being outdated, more recently charging that the current administration is using political reasons to justify the ban. (The FDA reapproved its 1983 restrictions on blood donors in 1998 and again in 2000.)

And some have raised other points worthy of consideration. For one, all donated blood must be tested for HIV, a fact that — while far from a 100 percent assurance of safety — would significantly reduce the already-slim chance that HIV- infected blood would make it into the blood supply.

Further, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black and Hispanic males are statistically far more likely to have HIV than white males — and yet there are no race-based restrictions. Perhaps the federal government considers judgments based on race to be uglier than judgments based on sexual orientation. Regardless, it’s clear that health statistics are not the measuring stick that they should be.

Last year, the Red Cross and other blood-collection agencies petitioned the FDA to alter the requirements for donation, arguing that ‘the current lifetime deferral for men who have had sex with other men is medically and scientifically unwarranted.’ The FDA has thus far taken no action on the issue.

The worst part of this episode is that politics may obscure the vital need for blood. Several school administrators initially suggested canceling future blood drives to send a message to the FDA. While such a boycott might put a little pressure on the FDA to review their HIV standards, it would certainly hurt or even cost the lives of people who desperately need transfusions in the meantime.

‘The most important thing is to provide blood to the people who need it,’ Red Cross spokeswoman Sara O’Brien told the Sentinel. ‘We’re going to go by any regulations rather than risk being shut down. … A boycott hurts a lot of innocent people. It’s not the best way to get your point across.’

In fact, the greatest argument for a revisitation of the FDA rules should emphasize the sheer number of lives that might be saved by allowing gay men to donate blood, if indeed the risk of HIV transmission is not significantly greater. The blood supply must of course be kept safe to use, but just as a single contaminated unit of blood can cost several lives, overstating the risks of any group of potential donors can cost just as many lives in lost transfusions. Whether you support gay rights or not, the opportunity to save lives should overwhelm any political considerations.

Ariel Bowman, Childers’ classmate and senior class vice president, hit the nail on the head: ‘As much as I think we need to protest what’s happening to Ronnie and the gay community, I think stopping efforts to save lives would be the worst way to protest. Obviously people need to give blood. I think we need to be bigger and continue to give.’

Gay, straight or otherwise, in Santa Cruz — and indeed around the world — public health is far too important to let politics be its driving force.