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.
This is idiotic (just like the ban on gay blood donors). So I guess it would also be wrong for a so-called “ex-gay” man to get married and start a family, right?
Also, if genes play a part in homosexuality, this comes awfully close to eugenics, even if that’s not the stated purpose.
Seems arbitrary and capricious if you ask me. Seems also indefensible given that the public health concern is resolvable by adopting more stringent procedures that should be institutionalized anyway.
In other words while we’re out of the closet our sperm has to go back in.
The problem is that there are higher health risks associated with gay sex (AIDS is not the only issue), and that public health concerns over the spread of infectious diseases is a very compelling argument (which has been used in other contexts as well, like immigration). What will be the contentious focus of the implementation of the new rule is whether it’s facially discriminatory on the basis of sexual orientation and whether the new rule is narrowly tailored enough to promote a compelling government public health interest in the context of private sperm donorship. Or, even simply whether the FDA has the authority to apply a blanket policy of discriminating against gay sperm donors.
The Associated Press got the story wrong
As the CultureWar heats up, watch this front particularly closely.
We’re about to see an unprecedented resurgence of eugenics, replete with a Dr. Francis Perkins_cum_Pat Robertson champion. This nascent movement will herald itself the growing victor over such “Fallen Genes” as homosexuality and a wide array of other such congenital, mis-diagnosed “genetically prescribed pathologies.” Not since you-know-when-and-where will science, politics, and faith converge for, probably, another perfect storm.
But, we cannot be so easily “cleaned” or “coded out” of the gene pool. If this were the case, there would have never been such a huge, fantastic spike of homosexuality after the Second World War’s Bombing of London. As we take a harder genetic look at history we’ll increasingly realize that one’s genes are not only inherited. They can also be greatly manipulated by one’s prenatal environment and resources. Genes are not only about precedents.
Human society will attempt to repair our “ills” by attacking effect and symptom — rather than cause. More work, and more lives, would be better dedicated towards eliminating those influences which continue to make homosexuality a necessary biological inevitability and, some have theorized, a bio-political necessity for the continued survival of our warlike species.
We might be called to till the garden, but we might better first understand the difference between pest and plant.
rob@egoz.org