Why We Need More LGBTQ+ Sperm Donors: Diversity, Inclusion, and New Paths to Family Building

Donor conception has changed the way families are formed. Sperm donation - including known donation - has become the route to parenthood for a wide range of people, from solo mothers by choice to lesbian couples. Despite this, donor options often still do not reflect the diversity of the communities they serve, particularly when it comes to LGBT+ people and people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Bringing more LGBT+ donors into sperm donation is one way that can help donor conception become more inclusive, representative and rooted in community. But why are LGBT+ sperm donors so underrepresented in the donor pool?

A History of Exclusion

For many years, sperm donation systems were built around assumptions of heterosexuality, with both donors and recipient couples imagined as heterosexual. It wasn’t until relatively recently, in many countries, that access to sperm bank services was available to alternative family builds, “due to legislative prohibitions on single women and lesbian couples accessing donor sperm in clinics”, which still affect accessibility in some countries today (1). Additionally, public-health regulations linked to HIV led to blanket restrictions on men who have sex with men donating sperm and other tissues. Even with some countries and regions moving towards individual, risk-based screenings, this legacy still shapes who feels welcome in donating to sperm banks. Expanding the presence of LGBT+ donors helps challenge the long-standing heterosexual framing of sperm donation and can contribute to a system that feels more representative of the people who use it.

Increasing Diversity and Representation

Studies of donor banks have highlighted disparities between the availability of sperm donors from different ethnic backgrounds and the general population (2). In the US, "Sperm donors of color are severely underrepresented in the nation’s sperm banks, and the blanket ban on gay and bisexual men from donating sperm contributes to that scarcity" (3). This underrepresentation can prove to be an issue for couples or individuals looking for donors who match their own background. Including more LGBT+ donors - especially those with diverse backgrounds - could help close some of the gaps. If queer future parents also want a donor who understands the LGBT+ experience, and are looking for options whose racial, cultural and queer identities mirror theirs, the pool of suitable donors can become even smaller. According to research done by Pride Angel (4), many future parents actively look for gay or LGBT+ donors, seeing them as more likely to share their values around openness and non-traditional family structures. However, because most sperm banks do not disclose or allow selection based on donor sexuality, queer‑identifying donors are effectively invisible in many catalogues, further limiting meaningful choice for families seeking this connection.

Community and Reciprocal Arrangements

Many queer-to-queer donation arrangements have been rooted in community ties and shared values. In these contexts, some lesbian parents choose gay donors they already know and trust, valuing transparency, mutual understanding and the possibility of defining roles outside traditional nuclear family models. In one collection of narratives from gay men who have donated to lesbian families, donors spoke about wanting to help people they knew overcome barriers to parenthood, and about building families that consciously reject narrow ideas of what a family can look like (5).

Creative reciprocal arrangements also exist, with many instances of lesbian couples providing eggs to a gay male couple in exchange for sperm, enabling both households to have children that are genetically connected to each other. Other families may choose a more explicit co-parenting structure, in which either two individuals or two sets of couples agree to share parenting responsibilities and decision-making together in a co-parenting arrangement. Known donation and co-parenting can offer an alternative path to fatherhood for gay men by creating opportunities to build families that reflect queer values around shared care, flexibility, and chosen kin. It also may offer a way to be involved in a child’s life that sits between anonymity and full-time parenting, depending on what everyone agrees to.

How Y factor Can Support More LGBT+ Donors

For LGBT+ people who might be open to donation, traditional clinic pathways can feel unwelcoming or opaque, especially given the context of exclusion and heteronormative assumptions. Y factor - an app created to connect known donors and future parents based on values and donation expectations - can help lower these barriers by:

• Allowing donors to be open about their identity, motivations and preferred level of involvement from the outset

• Connecting future parents with donors who actively share their queer and cultural expectations, and who are interested in anything from minimal contact to co-parenting

• Encouraging early conversations about legal frameworks, expectations for the child’s understanding of their origins, and the kind of relationship all parties want to build

Y factor is designed for future parents and donors who want more transparency and choice. For LGBT+ men, it can offer a structured way to explore donation with people who recognise their identities and experiences as an asset, rather than a barrier.

Bringing more LGBT+ donors into sperm donation is not just about increasing numbers. It is about reshaping donor conception so that it better reflects the diversity of families, and about creating more accessible pathways for queer people to participate in family-building, as both parents and donors.

1. “Sperm donors’ account of lesbian recipients: Heterosexualisation as a tool for warranting claims to children’s ‘best interests’” (Scholz, B. & Riggs, D) 2013

   https://damienriggs.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Heterosexualisation-sperm-donors.pdf

2. “Research Highlights Racial Disparities in US Sperm Donor Banks”

   *Giuliana Grossi

   , 2023*

   https://www.ajmc.com/view/research-highlights-racial-disparities-in-us-sperm-donor-banks

3. “Da Brat and The Latest (Rap) Battle: FDA Expected to Drop Sperm Donation Ban for Gay Men” - Arent Fox Schiff, 2024

   https://www.afslaw.com/perspectives/alerts/da-brat-and-the-latest-rap-battle-fda-expected-drop-sperm-donation-ban-gay-men

4. “Gay sperm donors in high demand”, Pride Angel, 2010

   https://www.prideangel.com/News-Events/Blog/2010/November-2010/Gay-sperm-donors-in-high-demand.aspx

5. “The Sweet Stories of Gay Men Who Donate Sperm to Lesbian Friends” Naveem Kumar, 2017,

   https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-sweet-stories-of-gay-men-who-donate-sperm-to-lesbian-friends/