{"id":1427,"date":"2004-05-22T18:01:19","date_gmt":"2004-05-22T22:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/05\/22\/still-poisoned\/"},"modified":"2004-05-22T18:01:19","modified_gmt":"2004-05-22T22:01:19","slug":"still-poisoned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/05\/22\/still-poisoned\/","title":{"rendered":"Still poisoned"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

All right, so once again the Food and Drug Administration
\nhas engaged in fag bashing, in its own lovely clinical way.  <\/span>It has disallowed gay men (more technically,
\nmen who have had sex with men anytime in the last five years) from providing
\nanonymous sperm donations to sperm banks. 
\n<\/span>This, it says, will prevent the transmission of HIV.<\/p>\n

Now, all donors of sperm must be tested for HIV, Hepatitis B
\nand C, chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, and mad cow disease.  <\/span>But gay men were the only men singled out
\nfor outright exclusion.<\/p>\n

I’ve written about this before<\/a>.  <\/span>I, as gay man who has had sex with other men, may not give
\nblood.  <\/span>I have been tested for all of
\nthese diseases on a regular basis, and my most recent set of tests was about
\nsix months ago, wherein I came up completely clean on all counts.  <\/span>I’ve had my hepatitis vaccines.  <\/span>I’ve had sex with no one other than my
\npartner in that time, and he’s had sex with no one other than me.  <\/span>But I still can’t give blood, because I’m
\nsupposedly an HIV risk.<\/p>\n

“The federal
\ngovernment issued recommendations [May 20] that look like they were written in
\n1982, not 2004,” said Lambda Legal Executive Director Kevin Cathcart.
\n“There is absolutely nothing about this proposal that’s based on science
\nor medicine — this is a policy based on bigotry. It’s completely illogical to
\nsay that a gay monogamous man who practiced safe sex four years ago cannot be a
\nsperm donor, but a heterosexual man who had high-risk unprotected sex 14 months
\nago can donate his sperm. HIV affects every part of our nation’s population,
\nand the F.D.A. needs to realize that fact and stop treating gay men as the only
\npeople who contract HIV.”<\/span><\/p>\n

And don’t give me the statistical carping about gay men
\nbeing at higher risk for the contraction or spread of HIV and other diseases.  <\/span>With the statistical, epidemiological
\nevidence we have seen of late, HIV is making its inroads into the
\nopposite-sex-having portion of the population at tremendous rates approaching
\nthose of the initial HIV epidemic among gay men in the early to mid-1980s.  <\/span>Who’s contracting HIV the fastest in our
\nsociety right now?  <\/span>Black women between
\n15 and 35.  <\/span>And where are many of them
\ngetting the virus?  <\/span>From men who are
\nhaving unprotected sex with other men “on the D.L. (down low)” and then
\nreturning to their female partners.  <\/span>If
\nthe FDA really cared about halting the spread of HIV transmission, it’d prevent
\nblack males and females in that age range from giving blood or sperm.  <\/span>And, as a bonus, then the extent of the
\ngovernment’s invidious bigotry would be exposed for all of us to see.<\/p>\n

You have to understand, I’m not generally suspicious of the
\ngovernment, especially the scientific bureaucracies when they are left alone to
\ndo their science without ideological blinders being put onto them.  <\/span>But this sort of ridiculousness and blatant,
\nunfounded prejudice falls way out of line. <\/p>\n

It’s not that I want to give sperm.  <\/span>But I do want the opportunity to give blood,
\nblood products, and to donate my organs and body upon my death.  <\/span>And I’ve led no more libidinous a past than
\nmany of my straight friends who do or intend to do these things.  <\/span>And frankly, I’m a hell of a lot more
\ncareful about sex than many of them have been – I can’t tell you how many times
\nI have had to remind my straight friends about these things called condoms,
\nspermicides, and so forth.  <\/span>But because
\nI have sex with men rather than women, I’m out. <\/p>\n

I may be able to get married (and it’s about time!), but
\ndon’t think the battle’s anywhere close to being done.  <\/span>We’re still going to have to fight tooth and
\nnail for every chance we get.  <\/span>I don’t
\nlike facile comparisons between the gay civil rights movement and the black
\ncivil rights push of the 1940s through the ‘70s.  <\/span>But on the need to have to fight like mad for every little
\nthing<\/b>, the comparisons seem more and more apt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All right, so once again the Food and Drug Administration has engaged in fag bashing, in its own lovely clinical way.  It has disallowed gay men (more technically, men who have had sex with men anytime in the last five years) from providing anonymous sperm donations to sperm banks.  This, it says, will prevent the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-n1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}