This month, however, a California bill passed the senate, which would allow HIV positive men to donate sperm if they meet certain requirements. The legislation would allow “washed” sperm to be donated to impregnate consenting women.  

While the bill may seem like a progressive move on the part of the government, it is primarily only targeted at straight men who are wanting to produce a family, instead of a lift on the ban against gays  

The government's gay scare began in 1981, when physicians in San Francisco and New York City began to see a pattern of unusual infections and cancers in young and otherwise healthy active homosexual men.

Originally thought to be contracted through the use of inhalants and other stimuli, the unknown virus--a collection of symptoms such as upper respiratory tract infections, pulmonary tuberculosis, severe weight loss, and lesions--resulted from damage to the immune system. 

When cases began to spread to the hemophiliac community, growing concern about the cause of the disease began to create panic for what would later be called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (or AIDS) for a disease thought to be acquired through certain behavior and not passed down hereditarily.  

Now, a quarter of a century later, AIDS has become a pandemic—over 33.5 million people are living with HIV world wide according to a recent World Health Organization report.  

While the numbers may be staggering, research and education has provided much needed information to the public at large, and HIV infected individuals are leading long healthy productive lives.  

Despite that fact, The Food and Drug administration still upholds their lifetime ban on blood donations from gay men.  

Early last year, however, the fight to overturn that policy made headlines once again, when, despite a recommendation from the American Red Cross and other blood sources, the FDA refused to lift the American ban.

A few countries, such as Costa Rica, have lifted their ban considering the need for blood deposits and the extensive testing and filtering system that blood goes through before it is used. 

The Red Cross has criticized the policy of banning gays as "medically and scientifically unwarranted," but the US Government felt that the risk of introducing HIV and AIDS into the blood supply was still too high to recall the lifetime ban.  

In a phone interview, Teresa Solorio, Red Cross Public Affairs Director for Southern California, explained that the Red Cross has been actively trying to make the FDA reverse their decision on upholding the ban.  

“We need a method of consideration that is fair and consistent and not just a blanket policy like the one currently in place.”  

Solorio explained that Southern California only supplies about 60% of the needed blood for the region. All other needs must be met by importing blood from other states.  

The process of making donations consists of a mini physical exam and a questionnaire about certain high-risk habits. Those who have received recent tattoos or have been exposed to hepatitis or other blood born diseases are deferred from consideration.  

Currently, men who have had sex with men since 1977 are permanently deferred from making blood donations and sperm donations, but recently passed legislation would allow HIV positive men to break the ban on sperm in order to produce children with a consenting female recipient.  

"This isn't a gay issue. It's in society's interest to give these couples a safe method of reproduction," said Sen. Carole Migden to the San Francisco Chronicle. "A clean procedure is available. Making it available in California is a positive step the government can take to produce healthy children."  

While it seems that strides are being made to further reproduction for HIV positive individuals, the blanket ban on gay donations is still firmly in place both in the United States and in several other counties around the world.  

In Fact, Canada, which has a similar ban on donations, has recently passed more restrictive legislation that would also prevents vital organ donations from gay men.  

As Clara Lavery, Pride Center Coordinator at the U. of Saskatchewan explained to the Star Phoenix, “Women between the ages of 17 and 23, who are in a low-income bracket, are now considered most risky because of their potential link to the sex trade.”  

“The government is putting other people's lives in danger by being exclusionary,” Lavery added.  

With new testing procedures available and blood cleansing processes almost guaranteed to prevent the spread of disease, for many health care workers it seems antiquated to prohibit certain sectors of society from donating much needed blood.  

More concerning is that gay men are the primary targets of these bans even though years of research have determined AIDS is in no way a gay disease, and gay men are no longer the highest at risk group.  

For now, the bans stand strong, and the gay community continues to be prohibited from making donations regardless of their HIV status.