As the demonstrators paraded, Randolfe Wicker, a veteran gay activist / journalist and CRUF's founder, spoke with WABC-am radio, answering audience questions during a 45-minute prime-time New York talk show, captured by a photographer from OUT. Following the show, Wicker also gave lengthy interviews to major magazines. With him on the picket line stood Sylvia Rivera, celebrated in historian Martin Duberman's book, Stonewall, as a veteran of the 1969 gay bar uprising against police shake-downs. Among enthusiastic and supportive bystanders was Bob Kohler, also a well-known Stonewall-era veteran. "Thus," explained CRUF's director to Gay Today, "three historic figures in Stonewall-era politics were, in fact, present."

According to Wicker, Ms. Rivera, leafleting the area prior to the demonstration, was asked by a 6th precinct policeman not to litter. The lawman's request was made politely, however, and was a far cry, said Wicker, from gay-unfriendly 6th precinct behavior in 1969. Ms. Rivera did, however, encounter hostility, even from gay people on the street, being spat upon and having a beer thrown on her. Other pre-picket leafleters encountered comparable hostility from angry persons--brick throwers-- who believe cloning portends ungodly assaults on the "divine" plan.

"Initially," said Wicker, "there were only two things out there, opposition and bewilderment, because no one seemed to understand why cloning is a gay issue. And I'm talking about the liberal West Village. When we leafleted the Lesbian and Gay Community Center and the people up there who were a little bit more aware began to say such things as 'Well, at least we want to have research.' With the Gay Today Badpuppy news and interview reprints about the organization's founding we reached a number of people, helping to focus minds on legalized cloning."

The WABC-am talk show, according to Wicker, "was a very interesting and involving show and I think it went very well. One of the nicest things is we began having new faces knocking on CRUF's door and saying, 'I got the flyer, I'm here, I want to work with you, I want to join the new organization' "The Anti-Violence Project, said Wicker "did a truly great job" helping to keep the peace, because, he said, "with all the earlier hostility I really was afraid we'd end up with a huge mob of jeering people threatening us. Someone said, 'Oh, don't picket at the gay monument, there are a lot of loose stones and bricks around there for hecklers to throw." A row of picket signs were visible. The slogans included "Keep Your Hands Off My DNA," and "Anti-Cloning Zealotry = Homophobia," which Wicker himself carried. There were also a few humorous signs, especially one picturing a sheep standing on a cloud, identified as "Dolly Lama: Our Spiritual Leader."