the FDA is issuing new guidelines for sperm donors that say any man who has had sex with another man (protected or not) in the past 5 years cannot donate sperm. in contrast, the rules for men who claim not to have had any recent gay men are much more flexible: only one year after your last risky encounter (risky being unprotected and with someone of unknown or questionable HIV status).
to elaborate on an argument quoted in the article, a gay man who has never had his dick touched without a condom on it must go celibate for five years before being allowed to donate. but as someone who identifies as heterosexual (because there's no way for them to really know other than simply asking the donors), i could get nasty with as many HIV+ women as i want... hell, i could fuck half of africa if i felt like it... and then donate just one year later.
the guidelines for blood donorship are even worse (and have been for years)... if you've had sex with another man anytime since 1979, even once, even protected, you can't donate blood. (seriously, these are in-depth, though it could be argued that protecting the blood supply is pretty important, something you can't really say about frozen sperm: nobody needs sperm to survive (and if there is such a person out there, i want to meet them).
maybe someone should set up a sort of "big brothers for sperm", matching up gay sperm donors with lesbians who want one, because that's about the only way gays will ever get to under the new guidelines:
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.”
