The San Diego Blood Sisters Cared for Men With AIDS When No One Else Would

In 1983, the Food and Drug Administration instituted a ban on blood donations from men who have sex with other men in an attempt to keep HIV out of the nation’s blood supply. This came as the AIDS epidemic was ravaging queer communities, and contributed to a nationwide blood shortage at a time when those suffering the effects of the deadly virus were in desperate need of blood for transfusions. In an act of solidarity and compassion, droves of lesbians held blood drives to help their gay compatriots. As we near the end of LGBTQ+ History Month, I’ve been thinking more about one group of these lesbians in particular: the San Diego Blood Sisters. Throughout the AIDS crisis, as the death toll rose and members of the LGBTQ+ community were attending funerals for more and more of their friends, the disease carried enormous stigma. Many doctors reported that they would refuse to treat patients who were diagnosed if given the choice, and the ignominy surrounding HIV/AIDS furthered healthcare practitioners’ prejudices against queer people, even if they tested negative. The media, the medical establishment, and the U.S. government made it so that victims of the disease were treated as lepers. A photo of the late Princess Diana became famous around the world merely because she was brave enough to shake hands with someone who had been hospitalized for AIDS without wearing gloves. Faced with that environment, it was critical for the queer community to come together and keep each other safe as institutions failed the thousands of people falling ill. It was in this atmosphere that the Blood Sisters were formedThe San Diego Democratic Club, founded in 1975, was a queer organization that, in its early years, often met to discuss political activism in people’s homes for fear of being outed. When the AIDS epidemic broke out, more than half of the men in the club’s leadership were diagnosed with the illness within a two-year period. Compelled by an influx of the disease in the