The religious right's reward

Why stick with Bush if you are a conservative Christian (other than his purported fellowship of faith)? Many liberal thinkers have noted that religious conservatives supply the votes but rarely get much in return for their loyalty, while the pro-business end of the GOP make a good return on their investment of campaign contributions.

Now we see some of their first fruits of the second term of George W. Bush: the FDA is banning sperm donations from sexually active gay men.

Leland Traiman, director of a pro-gay sperm clinic in Alameda, California said "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."

To me this seems facially discriminatory. Sure statistically gay might be a higher risk of having a STD (including HIV) but statistically, men are more likely to violently kill people with guns, knives, etc. than women are (way more than homosexual men are to spread STDs compared to heterosexual men), yet no one in their right mind would attempt to ban the sale of such weapons to men (2nd amendment notwithstanding). You can find stats that certain racial, ethnic, gender, or sexual orientations are more likely to speed, steel, take/deal drugs, rape, molest children etc. but we don't create laws around these statistical realities.

We are a nation of laws and rights, not of probabilities and actuaries.

Would we allow acceptors of sperm get to ask for no gays, no blacks, no Jews, etc.? I have seen ads in my college newspaper requesting egg donors only from women whose SATs are high and who have 4 Jewish grandparents. This is a private-to-private transaction, however; I would imagine that if the eggs were stored in a facility that gets federal money, the result might come out differently.

This would have been a great law review write-on memo topic. Instead, I have read up/write on search and seizure for an imaginary hooker.