NEWS: FDA Recommends Barring Gay Sperm Donors

POLITICS: FDA Recommends Barring Gay Sperm Donors

Despite logic, testability and the equal protection clause the US Food and Drug Administration is about to implement rules barring homosexuals from anonymously donating his sperm

While it is unclear whether this regulation will have the force of law, many sperm banks are expected to follow it. Some have already begun to exclude gay donors in anticipation of the regulation. Those opposed say that the law is clearly discrimantory and nonsensical.

Let's not forget that evil homosexuality gene that affect what should be a proper, heterosexual Christian child.

From the other thread on this topic:
To answer a question relating to donation of sperm as a constitutional right. The court may determine that denying anonymous donation does not violate the right to procreate (as someone earlier stated [in the other thread], gay men can still donate, i.e. procreate, just not anonymously), as such donation is a privilege, not a right.
However, Equal Protection would still apply, as it also prohibits denial of a privilege, for no good reason, that others posess.

Don't they still ask "Have you had homosexual sex since 1977?" when you donate blood? This doesn't seem much different. Not to say that it's right just that there is precedent.

yeah, they do. they also ask if you've had sex with a man who has had homosexual sex since 1977. lame, yet true.

Sadly, I'd guess that this was, in fact, a motivating factor.

They ask if you've had any sexual contact with another man since that date -- not just sex, but any form of sexual contact at all. If you happen to answer yes and your application gets processed, your name goes in a database of ineligible donors and you're "indefinitely" prohibited from donating blood (in other words, until they change their policy on the matter).

That's the way it was with the American Red Cross a couple of years ago, anyway.

they should just lie about it. shit. there are many ways around this.

If it is genetic, and it is the type of gene where it gets directly passed down genetically, an interesting question arises:

Should we disallow gays from anonymously donating sperm in order to ensure survival?

It's an interesting question, because if a lot of people got the anonymous sperm of gays and had milions of gay children, it could affect the birthrate signifigantly.

Of course, I dont see a lot of people using anonymous sperm donors to father children, or a lot of gay men rushing out to spread "gayness"

Because all those gay people are clearly the result of gay sex. Huh? Wha?

^HA!

while i disagree that being gay gives you a higher propensity towards contracting HIV, i cannot rule out (as science has not either) that being homosexual could very well be a genetic trait. It is thought by some, according to relatively new research that a childs brain develops it's sexuality before it's sex organs. If this is true, it could explain why some are homosexual, as well as why some feel they are a "man trapped in a womans body," or vice versa.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35176

if this is true, that you can be genetically pre-disposed to homosexuality, how is that a good thing with regards to procreation of our species?

now, let's just get it out that i have nothing against homosexuals, bisexuals, etc. Everyone lives their own life, that's not my concern. But, concerning society as a whole, a spread and eventual takeover of homosexuality will be the end (as in nobody to procreate) of humanity.

This is of course a knee-jerk reaction, and honestly has a .000001% chance of happeng.

But let's not forget about the woman that is going to the sperm bank to have a child. I think she should know whether or not the donor is homosexual, and make a choice as to whether or not that is acceptable. In all fairness, most women would like to choose who they procreate with, be it a man or a test tube.

To avoid parallel threads, I'm pasting in this discussion of whether the rule is constitutional from the non-news wire thread on this subject:

That analysis seems right to me. I completely agree that Skinner does seem odd in that it defined the right to procreate as fundamental in the equal protection context. Today (that is, any time after the
Griswold decision on contraceptives in the mid-60s) most people would probably think of that as a substantive due process right. Although courts tend to be more wary of substantive due process claims, it's well established by now that substantive due process protects an individual's decisions with respect to procreation, so I think there would be strong claims under both clauses.

And even if the court didn't buy the idea that this is subject to strict scrutiny under the equal protection clause (possibly because the rule arguably does not bar gays from procreating, but only says they can't donate semen that may or may not be used some time down the road, etc.), this probably still violates equal protection. This is the sort of thing that would most likely be subject to the heightened form of rational basis review the Court used in Romer v. Evans (and City of Cleburne before it). Under that line of cases, courts faced with actions that are tenuously linked to the asserted purpose for the action consider whether the action was motivated by animus rather than by the purported purpose. Here the link is so tenuous and the probability that the rule is inspired by animus so high that the rule probably fails even this less strict test.

If I were writing the brief, it would look something like this:

I. The FDA Rule Violates [x's] Right to Substantive Due Process Because It Is Not Narrowly Tailored to the Goal of Preventing the Spread of HIV/AIDS

II. The FDA Rule Violates [x's] Right to Equal Protection
A. The Rule Is Subject to Strict Scrutiny Because It Restricts the Right to Procreate, Which Is Fundamental (citing Skinner)
B. Even if the Rule is Not Subject to Strict Scrutiny, It Is Not Reasonably Related to the Goal of Preventing the Spread of HIV/AIDS but Rather Is Motivated Primarily by Animus Toward Gays

Hey, if we get to work on it now, we could probably finish an amicus brief on behalf of SG by the time this gets challenged in court.

*Edited in a vain attempt to fix quotes*

[Edited on May 06, 2005 by nonbillable]

Man you'd think someone would have raised the issue that they could just test the sperm for such diseases. And like blood, just destroy the infected materials. Although i guess labeling an entier populace as diseased works as well.

Just to head you off on the genetics/perpetuation of the species question.
Remember this: up until the advent of artificial insemination, every gay person ever born was a direct result of heterosexual intercourse.
If "gay genes" resulted in the species dying out, and are inhereted from gay parents, there wouldn't be any gays left in the population. The gene(s) would have self-selected out of the genome thousands of years ago.

edit: spelling

[Edited on May 06, 2005 by skeptik]

Haha - Elimination of the "gay gene"... hmmm, I wonder if the more those gay genes actually spread, the less we'll have to worry about overpopulation.

Actually, I remember recently reading some statistics on AIDS cases in the US, The CDC's two main classifications are injection-drug users, and men who have sex with men. Together, those two groups make up 85 or 90% of all AIDS cases in the US. Men who have sex with men make up over 50% of the cases. I don't know what the stats are for pre-AIDS HIV infection, but that might be some of the justification/rationalization the FDA is using.

I'll see if I can find links.

Oh, and as far as the science is concerned re: blood donation, sperm donation, and AIDS.
MSM can be barred from blood donation because the recipient can be infected from the donated blood even if there are no HIV antibodies in it, because the viral load in infected blood can be low enough not to trigger a positive test result, yet still exist, and reproduce in the recipient later.
Donated sperm used in in vivo fertilization has a similar, but extremely lower risk to the mother. Donor sperm used in in vitro fertilization has no such risk.
There has never been a recorded case of a baby contracting HIV from the sperm that fertilized its egg. Babies born infected have without exception contracted it from the mother, usually during the process of vaginal birth, not during fetal development.

The statistics depend on what year's being considered and what area is being looked at. A CDC report gives 2000 percentages at 59% of cases in the 13-19 age range and 53% in the 20-24 range. A report from the NAID places the percentage (worldwide) at 60%, and 2003 national statistics cited some state reports place it at 45%. Different areas are seeing larger rises due to different factors, though, when taking an international overview; for instance, last year's UNAIDS report noted that increasing IV drug use was possibly the most prevalent factor in Eastern Europe, lack of proper precautions with sex workers and increasingly lax attitudes toward casual sex were big factors in Asia, other areas might have larger incidents of MSM infection than reported due to social stigmas/laws prohibiting homosexual relations (which might also contribute to improper treatment and prevention), etc.

The common thread seems to be the engagement in high-risk behaviors. That's where I think that the critics have a point:

well, not really head me off per se, lol, just throwing ideas out. it is a good point tho, but you can't say "every single one" because there are instances when gay couples (or singles) get knocked up or donate to a friend for whatever reasons. (melissa etheridge anyone?)

Yes, well, demand for gay sperm is still high. There are pictures on the internet that attest to this fact.

Given the fact that we as humans having conquered all our natural predators and are breeding like rabbits I think the odds of the miniscule number of children conceived in vitro by an even more miniscule number of gay donors being a threat to the survival of the species are pretty close to none. Straight people have gay kids. Gay people have straight kids. If there is a genetic component its not one of the sort where there is a carrier.

Incidentally the Worldnet Daily is only marginally more credible in its histrionics than the Weekly World News.

.

[Edited on May 06, 2005 by nonbillable]

Well, if you're referring to the legal arguments that I quoted and responded to above, I can say with some confidence that that is exactly what I am paid to do as a lawyer. And it's pretty much what I would expect anyone who is an advocate, or even anyone who advocates any political point of view, to do. SG is not, as far as I know, an unbiased judicial body.

People just never give up. There's no real proof of a gay gene, to my knowledge, and secondly, the ancient Greeks had plenty of Homosexual relations, and their society didn't rot from the inside out, or anything. Gayness doesn't destroy a society! Macedonians do.

Anyway, this is all the inevitable product of reliance on a central authority. The FDA was created to put an end to unscrupulous business practices, but now it's turned into another bossy apparatus. Slowly but surely, the American public is losing all the benefits that conned it into trusting big government in the first place. We get taxed out the wazoo and watch it go to places we never even heard of -after all, with only 45 minutes of social studies a day, how can students learn anything meaningful about other countries?

The worst part here is that gay people lose more income in taxes (They can't marry, they can't adopt in quite a few states, so they get less tax breaks) and the FDA is a government institution, so gays are, percentage-wise, footing the bill for their own persecution.

I'm sorry, I'm rambling.

Wow, keep talking like that and you might get your libertarian membership card revoked. Since when does only a complete denial of rights equal government action? When the government tells an individual he cannot exercise his rights in a given way, it is still a restriction of that individual's rights, even if not a complete restriction. In this case, people have said the FDA rule is an example of government restricting an individual's right to procreate (not mention his right to equal protection of the laws). I know it's a lot easier to see government action in the case of forced sterilization, but are you really denying that in this case the government is telling an individual that he cannot procreate in a certain way?

You seem to think that you think this is okay because it is not a restriction of any "individual freedom." In reality, though, what you're saying demonstrates that you think it's okay because you believe that the restriction of individual freedom is justified by the rationale of protecting the public health, as calculated by "the field of medicine acting on the best information they have gathered through research."

I'm not saying that's not a valid point of view; I'm sure plenty of people would support it. But I don't think it's the point of view you think it is, i.e., one that is consistent with your professed "voracious" libertarian view of individual rights.