I'm actually not particularly opposed to the FDA's ban on gay men as blood donors. I used to think it was ridiculous until I learned that
the US is not unusual in the policy, it's actually standard in most developed Western countries. The fact is the rate of HIV infection amongst the gay community is 17 times that of people at large, the rate amongst blacks isn't anywhere near comparable. The real controversy isn't the ban but the fact that it's indefinite. The Red Cross lobbied the FDA to lower it to a one year deferral, which was rejected, but not repeal it altogether. Now changing the ban to a temporary deferral as many of those other countries have done is a reasonable policy and one I'd be in favor of, but I am now convinced that such policies are not based on homophobia or bigotry, especially when you consider the people in charge of setting them come from very educated backgrounds and are exactly the sort of people who'll support gay marriage. It's not like the FDA is made up exclusively of people who went to med school at fundamentalist colleges.
Here's a fairly amusing bit of irony: the Netherlands and Norway are amongst the countries that in addition to the US have lifetime deferrals, while Russia has no deferral at all. As strange as that sounds, it does show that moral approval of homosexual behavior is not much of a factor in a country's policies in regards to this.
However I don't believe corneas pose the same risk blood does. But of course I'm also not in any way even remotely qualified to make that sort of ruling.
