THEOCRACY WATCH!!!: Gay Men not allowed to father babies

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Irvine511

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honestly, how would you feel? this is such blatant discrimination, such homphobic nonsense rooted in mythology ... this is so inexcusable, i now feel as if my sometime constant harping on these issues is fully justified. there are people out there who want us to go away, disappear.



FDA to Implement Gay Sperm Donor Rules By DAVID CRARY, AP National Writer
Thu May 5, 5:31 PM ET



To the dismay of gay-rights activists, the Food and Drug Administration is about to implement new rules recommending that any man who has engaged in homosexual sex in the previous five years be barred from serving as an anonymous sperm donor.

The FDA has rejected calls to scrap the provision, insisting that gay men collectively pose a higher-than-average risk of carrying the AIDS virus. Critics accuse the FDA of stigmatizing all gay men rather than adopting a screening process that focuses on high-risk sexual behavior by any would-be donor, gay or straight.

"Under these rules, a heterosexual man who had unprotected sex with HIV-positive prostitutes would be OK as a donor one year later, but a gay man in a monogamous, safe-sex relationship is not OK unless he's been celibate for five years," said Leland Traiman, director of a clinic in Alameda, Calif., that seeks gay sperm donors.

Traiman said adequate safety assurances can be provided by testing a sperm donor at the time of the initial donation, then freezing the sperm for a six-month quarantine and testing the donor again to be sure there is no new sign of HIV or other infectious diseases.

Although there is disagreement over whether the FDA guideline regarding gay men will have the force of law, most doctors and clinics are expected to observe it.

The practical effect of the provision — part of a broader set of cell and tissue donation regulations that take effect May 25 — is hard to gauge. It is likely to affect some lesbian couples who want a child and prefer to use a gay man's sperm for artificial insemination.

But it is the provision's symbolic aspect that particularly troubles gay-rights groups. Kevin Cathcart, executive director of Lambda Legal, has called it "policy based on bigotry."

"The part I find most offensive — and a little frightening — is that it isn't based on good science," Cathcart said. "There's a steadily increasing trend of heterosexual transmission of HIV, and yet the FDA still has this notion that you protect people by putting gay men out of the pool."

In a letter to the FDA, Lambda Legal has suggested a screening procedure based on sexual behavior, not sexual orientation. Prospective donors — gay or straight — would be rejected if they had engaged in unprotected sex in the previous 12 months with an HIV-positive person, an illegal drug user, or "an individual of unknown HIV status outside of a monogamous relationship."

But an FDA spokeswoman cited FDA documents suggesting that officials felt the broader exclusion was prudent even if it affected gay men who practice safe sex.

"The FDA is very much aware that strict exclusion policies eliminate some safe donors," said one document.

Many doctors and fertility clinics already have been rejecting gay sperm donors, citing the pending FDA rules or existing regulations of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

"With an anonymous sperm donor, you can't be too careful," said a society spokeswoman, Eleanor Nicoll. "Our concern is for the health of the recipient, not to let more and more people be sperm donors."

However, some sperm banks, notably in California, have welcomed gay donors. The director of one of them, Alice Ruby of the Oakland-based Sperm Bank of California, said her staff had developed procedures for identifying gay men with an acceptably low risk of HIV.

Gay men are a major donor source at Traiman's Rainbow Flag sperm bank, and he said that practice would continue despite the new rules.

"We're going to continue to follow judicious, careful testing procedures for our clients that even experts within the FDA say is safe," said Traiman, referring to the six-month quarantine.

The FDA rules do not prohibit gay men from serving as "directed" sperm donors. If a woman wishing to become pregnant knows a gay man and asks that he provide sperm for artificial insemination, a clinic could provide that service even if the man had engaged in sex with other men within five years.

However, Traiman said some lesbian couples do not have a gay friend they know and trust well enough to be the biological father of their child, and would thus prefer an anonymous donor.

Dr. Deborah Cohan, an obstetrics and gynecology instructor at the University of California, San Francisco, said some lesbians prefer to receive sperm from a gay donor because they feel such a man would be more receptive to the concept of a family headed by a same-sex couple.

"This rule will make things legally more difficult for them," she said. "I can't think of a scientifically valid reason — it has to be an issue of discrimination."

___
 
I'm no expert, but that definitely has to be based upon bad science, and that sure seems like discrimination to me. So straight guys who are sleeping w/ tons of women aren't subjected to the same restriction?

What about donating blood, what are the guidelines for that now? How is that any different?
 
I think this is something more sinister other than concern for spreading HIV. I wonder if the religious right might be behind these rules. It would be just like them to maybe think that gay people would produce gay babies.
 
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A policy like this would be okay if they were screening out any man who had had unprotected sex in the last five years. It's patently unfair to have two separate sets of standards for straight and gay men.

:down:
 
deep had posted this article in the "Question of the Day" thread, but it didn't get much attention. he also had some entertaining comments about how they could go about enforcing this. :wink:

wouldn't they have to check each and every donation anyway to ensure it wasn't an infected sample before using it to impregnate a woman? if the proper safeguards are in place, this shouldn't be an issue for anyone, regardless of sexual orientation.

blantant discrimination. i don't get where people get the balls to make these kinds of ridiculous justifications--do they not realize how preposterous they sound? do they think we won't see this for what it really is?


:mad:
 
Irvine511 said:
"This rule will make things legally more difficult for them," she said. "I can't think of a scientifically valid reason — it has to be an issue of discrimination."

Bingo. And all it serves to do is to spread the stereotype that all gay men have AIDS, which is clearly not true.

How about a ban on blacks? Don't they all have AIDS too? :p

Melon
 
Re: Re: THEOCRACY WATCH!!!: Gay Men not allowed to father babies

melon said:
How about a ban on blacks? Don't they all have AIDS too? :p



you know, i thought about this very same thing this morning.

i think African-Americans are as much, and growing, an at-risk group for HIV than gay men are, especially African-American men who have been in prison.

but we all know racism is bad.

homophbia, however, is TOTALLY COOL!!!
 
Re: Re: Re: THEOCRACY WATCH!!!: Gay Men not allowed to father babies

Irvine511 said:
homophobia, however, is TOTALLY COOL!!!

Oh yeah. And you're a bigot if you don't let these people be homophobic.

Melon
 
They should be testing all donations for HIV, people lie on those questionaires and even if they don't and have not had sex in a year they might be infected and not know it. The fact that they don't would make me very wary of using a sperm donor at all (not that I'd want one).
 
nbcrusader said:
:no: do they fear the passing on of the "gay gene"?



i was thinking that too ... it's weird, part of the argument is that it isn't genetic and that no one is born gay, so there can't be a gay gene; yet, if you want to stop gay men from reproducing, then perhaps the biological component of homosexuality presents something of a fear to such people? so, they're admitting, in effect, that it is at least partly genetic?

oy, this gets complex...
 
pardon the pun....that's nuts! (the subject matter that is, not anyone's post) :mad:

really, really sad.
 
Oh good Christ in heaven. This is utter garbage.

When I saw this article when I got home from school today, my jaw literally dropped. This might just be the most blatant form of discrimination against homosexuals that I've seen so far. WHAT NEXT? Should gays have their own schools and water fountains?

Oh, and the obligatory :madspit: (of course)
 
now that i think about it, perhaps this is part of a larger strategy. as homosexuals are more and more represented in popular culture, and as decades of fear and lies start to fall away and we come to understand that gay people are people first and that there is no moral distinction to be made between heterosexuality and homosexuality, perhaps this shows a shifting of technique.

instead of couching it as a "moral" issue or a "religious" issue, the homophobic social right is going to start condemning homosexuality for being "unhealthy" ... sorry, that the "gay lifestyle" is "unhealthy." and then they will use this as the basis for anti-gay legislation.
 
MrsSpringsteen said:

What about donating blood, what are the guidelines for that now? How is that any different?

I used to give (sell?) plasma, and they wouldn't let you if you were male and had sex with a man, or female and had sex with a man who has had sex with another man within a certain time period.

Though I would hope they tested all the plasma for AIDS and other diseases, my guess is that they do it to exclude high risk groups and thus save money. If they pay someone and then throw out their plasma they lose money, so they exclude some of the high risk groups so they don't have to pay them in the first place. I'd imagine the same would be true for sperm banks.

Just a guess. Either way, I think it's ridiculous.
 
I think Kristie might be on to something - I recalled the same kinds of stuff when giving blood.

I bet it's an actuary science kind of thing - forumlaes/risk mitigation calcs, etc...

and someone is saving a buck somewhere

--and although obviously discriminatory I'm not sure if it's a sinister, larger strategy worthy of THEOCRACY WATCH.
 
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It damned well IS.

Have you noticed how much legislation Our Savior Dubya has snuck under the radar these past 3 months, while the public is asleep:

1) making it all but impossible to file a class-action lawsuit
2) Ditto for filing for bankrupcy (how ling will it take the public to wake up to this one and realize they've been HAD?)
3) Requiring 4 (count'em) types of ID to be presented at Motor Vehicle to get or renew a driver's license, this info being entered into a Federal database that is quietly being contrcuted as we write)..can we say BIG bOTHER anyone? A national ID is just around the corner, and it'll be a LOT different than just having a Soc Security number
4) Removing virtually all protections from previously unlogged land, including a lot of land currently in National Parks..that's right, the timber inductry is now free to go in and build roads and commit ecocide just about anywhere. "Ecocide", that' a great word, I've picked it up from the book I'm reading right now, the sequal to Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel",. They way he used it it means when socities unwittingly destroy their environment through overuse of rescources and it leads to the collapse of their civilization, nothing evil about it, just stupity--as in "suicide"; though I prefer to use it like "genocide" of the environment, "ecocide")
5)Closed all but 4 out of the 150 Social Sec. offices around the country, making it much HARDER FOR the elderly who are discriminated against in filing for medical claims, admittance into nursing homes, etc, to have a judge hear their case--they'll now how a case heard on TV screen, if it;s heard at all. Don't tell me that Bush is quietyl dismantling the Social Security infrastructure agaist the people's wishes, as if he had support for his plans, which a lot of people don't support this...thus making it easier for him to sell the doing away with it later on, he'll cite these very closongs making it harder to run the bearucratic apparatus needed to keep the program in existence)

And that's not even getting into the religious issues.

I hate to say this, but I hope the price of oil doubles in the next year, even thoughit'll make things much harder for us. Economically. It just might be the only thing that willmake the American people wake up out of their :censored: stupor and realize just what they voted for. We all saw the pics of him kissing up to the Saudis last week. "Pump more oil, please, so my poll numbers can go up again!" Um: has anyhbody on here heard the term PEAK OIL? If you don't learn about it. SCARY stuff. Saudi Arabia has far less cheap oil than we thought it did. It has alot of oil still, but not cheap or clean or high quality oil left. I might start a thread on chaging lifestyles as a result....
 
Teta040 said:
I hate to say this, but I hope the price of oil doubles in the next year, even thoughit'll make things much harder for us. Economically. It just might be the only thing that willmake the American people wake up out of their :censored: stupor and realize just what they voted for.


will get to you in a min, Irv.
:| erm, Teta..... I'm one of those poor people who could be drastically afected by your "wishfulful" futurecast thinking. I was lower to middle- middle class until around ten yrs back. I never did that kind of thinking. I was a liberal/prgressive then, as I still am now.

But I don't like being an Unvoluntered "guiena pig", in these kind of mental political projects :mad:. ANd not all the time- but much of the time when this kind of thinking IS done, it's by middle class people, or really upper middle class people.

SO unless you're poor where we can then argue strategy on an even playing field. OR you're going to contribute generously to a charity that'll help pay my heating bills, so I don't "have to" freeze half the winter away......... I'd kindly ask you to refrain from this kind of thinking. [/rant]
______________________________________

As for the homophobes....:angry: :mad: :scream: :censored: :censored:

to hell with all religious fundimentalists...... ESP when they try to take over the goverment.
I don't like ANY of them, becasue the are SO bigoted against gays, women, scientists [not talking about unethical or ones bought by big corps]. NAd though I am a very spiritual person-- I had a strong adversion to fundamentalists of one religion calling their religion 'the one true" religion...whether Christian, Islam {the worst offenders IMHP} [ tho the Hindu Nationalist don't get any aplause from me while they battle with the muslims in Northern India - what a sad mess}, by the time I was ten yrs old.

I do have great affection for two of the most liberal-minded and Ecumenical {which they not only include the 3 mono-theistic religions, but the multi-thestic Hinduim, Non-theisatioc Buddhism and the animistic types...African, Native American etc Indigenous religions} Episcopal churhes here......
[/rant2]
 
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Teta040 said:
I hate to say this, but I hope the price of oil doubles in the next year, even thoughit'll make things much harder for us. Economically. It just might be the only thing that willmake the American people wake up out of their :censored: stupor and realize just what they voted for.
:eyebrow: It's great to see such an optimistic attitude.
 
Well, to stay off-topic, I don't wish the price of oil gets any higher, no matter who is in power.
 
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