I know that the Bush presidency has brought back this odious nostalgia for the Reagan years among conservatives, but this is ridiculous.
I refer you to the FDA's new rules on sperm donation. The new FDA rule states that any man who has engaged in homosexual activity - they probably mean sodomy and oral sex, but those of you out there giving hand jobs and kissing boys had better not try either - within the last five years, whether protected or not, may not donate sperm to sperm banks. Period.
Obstensibly, this rule is intended to lower the chance of transmitting HIV via donor sperm. I say obstensibly because the rule is full of shit and scientists should know better. The idea that HIV/AIDS was the "gay plague" went out with the links between Satanic cults and dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities) in the early nineties. Until the last year or so, HIV infections were down among homosexuals and up among heterosexuals. The recent scare of increasing HIV transmission among homosexual men is probably what inspired this disgusting piece of pseudo-scientific policy.
Yes, that's right: pseudo-scientific. There is no matching policy that says any straight man having unprotected sex in the last five years cannot donate his boys to deserving ovum via artificial insemination. In fact, there is no rule that says disgusting Albert with his bad hygeine and frequent unprotected romps with prostitutes cannot donate sperm the day after said romp.
It isn't even sodomy they're after. Do your girlfriend in the butt and donate sperm the same day! Hey, they don't care! This policy exists to protect no one. Given that sperm donor clinics test the sperm for a whole rash of diseases, including HIV/AIDS, freeze the sperm, and then test it again in six months for the same diseases before entering it into their donor list, there's more to worry about from getting a blood transfusion.
This policy is about nothing more than discriminating against homosexuals. No one is protected, not one child saved. The FDA, goaded by the Bush Administration, is merely returning us to the days when AIDS was "God's retribution on the fags."
The only explanation I can see for this is that the Bush Administration has finally recognized that homosexuality is a naturally occurring phenomenon. There's something in the genes that directs sexual preference, or at least predisposes one to it. Having recognized this, they are now engaging in step one of culling the "gay gene" from the gene pool. It's the only possible explanation. If they believed homosexuality was a choice, this discriminatory policy wouldn't be necessary. They would just forbid homosexuals from raising children, so the gay cooties didn't rub off.
In the end, it doesn't matter their reason for it. Forbidding active gay men from donating their sperm on pseudo-scientific grounds is blatant discrimination. If they were saying that African-Americans or Latinos couldn't donate, I wouldn't even have to be writing this, because the hallowed halls of the Food and Drug Administration would be on fire, filled with rampaging people eager to stamp out such a disciminatory policy and put its disgusting authors to the torch. "Of, by, and for the People" indeed. Just so long as they're not, you know, queer.
-Jim
[Cross-posted at Los Punditos and linked to by Salon's Daou Report.]
