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The First Human Cloning Activist |
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Interview By Jack Nichols
GayToday was brand new in those days, and it seemed the birth of Dolly the sheep was an historic event, one on which this cutting edge newsmagazine sought to comment. So I called Randy at 10 p.m. that night and said, "I'd like to interview you about your interest in human cloning." He agreed and together--on the spot-- we created the first-ever activist's interview presenting human cloning in a positive light.
The next morning after the interview Randy Wicker rushed into downtown Manhattan
and registered the world's first pro-human cloning activist organization,
Clone Rights United Front.
There was an almost fictional 'Charles Dickens' quality about this development. Amidst his antiques in a old neighborhood that appears to be a kind of old world stage, sat Randy, a radical futurist awash in scientific knowledge, eager to defend human cloning from unwarranted government interference and to welcome, like an enthusiastic uncle, the cloned children of the 21st century. GayToday followed his first activist steps, his appearance before a Congressional Subcommittee in Washington; his TV talk show gigs and his first interviews and mentions in Heterodoxy magazine, Playboy, The New York Times Magazine, and USA Today. For a time, GayToday itself was brought into the limelight. The TV moderator on Pat Robertson's 700 Club told his shocked audience:" If you don't believe the homosexuals are promoting cloning, go to www.gaytoday.badpuppy.com " Most recently, a full page photo of Randolfe Wicker appeared in February's WIRED magazine. TV and radio moguls are once again knocking on his door, as they discover that no one else is prepared to defend human cloning with such outright, thought-out zealotry.
Randolfe Wicker: Yes, Jack, I suffered from a certain social and political myopia when I started getting involved in the human cloning debate. I just couldn't understand why all those people on late night TV were so wound up and angry about the very idea of it. To me, the announcement of “Dolly's birth” was just some more good news about science. But, suddenly there were the same anti-gay people like Cardinal O'Connor in New York declaring that “human cloning” was totally unacceptable morally. I thought about it. Since three female sheep had been involved in the creation of Dolly-- one female gave the cell, another female gave the egg and the third female carried the lamb and gave birth- I concluded that the anti-cloning fervor was based on the fact that we had same-sex reproduction for the first time in mammals. In fact, at our first demonstration, six days after the announcement of Dolly's birth, I carried a sign I now regret carrying which declared: “Anti-Cloning Zealotry =Homophobia'. That was the very beginning. Most of the people who helped me were personal friends or people who owed me favors. I had only a couple volunteers and they were basically lonely people who seemed to have a generalized tendency to volunteer for everything everywhere. They weren't people I could really discuss the issues involved in cloning with. Jack Nichols: I've heard you say--on many occasions during the last four years--that you feel very lonely as an activist in this human cloning movement. There are a few others like a lawyer, Mark Eibert, who lives in California, and, in the South, an anonymous doctor who shares your views. But the media is once again beating down your door because you--alone among the many--have prepared yourself to defend cloning from its hosts of detractors. Who else has come forward to help? Randolfe Wicker: Yes, I often think of the story of how Harry Hay searched for five years before he found someone who shared his vision of a gay liberation movement. I was lucky insofar as the first year I found an attorney, an advocate for infertile people.
When they could only come up with $420, the abortion contact person simply said 'Tough luck, buddy" and hung up on me. I didn't even have his phone number to call him back. My friend proceeded to give his girlfriend quinine pills which induced a miscarriage which nearly killed her. He met the parents of the woman he had lived with for two years over the hospital bed where she had nearly died ending the pregnancy he had caused. At that moment, a light went on in my head. Society wasn't just fucked up about homosexuality. Society was fucked up about sex in general. That realization caused me to join the Sex Freedom League which was demonstrating for things like legalized abortion, against censorship, etc. Then the Vietnam war came along. My friend introduced me to pot which I used heavily for several years before switching back to alcohol. I had escaped the gay ghetto. I had discovered the much larger real world. When cloning came along, I encountered an issue, which would ultimately prove to be a mental adventure and journey of the spirit. After Mark Eibert, I commenced making cloning activist friends from different walks of life. There were physicians who could not be public in their support for human cloning for professional reasons. Then came Shauna, “the girlfriend of my life”' who was still fighting kidney disease at age 28 after being told at age 9 that she would be dead by the time she was 17. Since she couldn't have kids herself, she “adopted” all these frightened little children waiting for kidney transplants and “mothers” them and their family. She is now one of my closest friends in life. If I was thirty years younger, I'd marry her in a flash. We talk several hours a week on the phone. I flew down to see her last summer. Her aunt visited me in NYC. It is like I've found new members of my family. Actually, Shauna has all those social skills that I lack. She has great empathy and warmth. It was just coincidence that an infertile couple I was counseling through the Human Cloning Foundation lived near her in Orlando. Last summer, Shauna had to have her ovaries removed. She took that very hard since the one thing she would want to do if she ever conquered kidney disease would be to have a family. She called Desiree, the infertile woman I'd been corresponding with, from her hospital bed in Orlando to share with her the feelings of not being able to have children, woman to woman. That friendship would create a bond and would eventually find for us the first infertile couple who would come out of “the closet” and speak as infertile people for infertile people. I know that it is hard to believe but even though some 10% of heterosexual couples are infertile, they are terribly closeted about it. They seem to be ashamed of something that they have no control over. It was amazing to me to discover this huge “closet” in our society filled with “guilt-ridden heterosexuals”. It reminded me of all those homosexuals in the 1950s. So, finally with Desiree, we started to have infertile people willing to speak up for their reproductive rights. Over the last few months, I have developed contacts with several other couples., including a lesbian couple from Baltimore, willing to speak to the press. This has been a great asset to us. Barry Serafin interviewed me a couple days ago for a report on Human Cloning to be broadcast on MSNBC's national news with Peter Jennings during the coming week (February 5-10) . This weekend they are interviewing an infertile couple I've found in New Jersey.
Randolfe Wicker has brought the cloning issue to many publications, including this one from Japan
The infertile heterosexual community seems to finally be finding its voice. It has been thrilling for me to participate in this new movement in our country. Of course, we homosexuals live our lives, in most cases, in infertile relationships. But we not are hiding a “deep dark secret” from everyone else around us because they are all infertile as well. We have also commenced getting a valuable network of professional geneticists, physicians, molecular biologists, medical school bioethicists, etc. I am a self-educated citizen activist who, for this brief moment in time, has become “the voice” of the human cloning movement. But a most educated and brilliant team of professionals holds me aloft. Jack Nichols: I've always felt that we should be prepared for the arrival of human cloning because, like it or not, its going to happen. Cloned people. There are many who are fearful about it. Some are actively opposing you. Who are the principal foes of human cloning and what are some of the arguments they advance? Randolfe Wicker: The principal foes of human cloning are religious reactionaries who see “cloning” as human beings playing God. The Catholic Church is the leader of the opposition. However, there are also large numbers of “environmental fundamentalists” who are also involved. So, you have the traditional political right (Catholic Church, Right-To-Life Protestant fundamentalists) in bed with people generally thought of being part of the traditional left (environmentalists and those other groups who rallied together in Seattle). Like they say, politics makes strange bedfellows.
They generally make arguments like we hear made against homosexuals. Cloning “isn't natural”. In fact it is. Identical twins are naturally occurring clones. Some Geckos and other developed forms of life which usually reproduce sexually when both sexes are available, the females at least, will simply lay eggs that hatch female clones of themselves when stranded on an island without males.
The “playing God” argument is one constant theme. It is interesting that they cling to that so reverently because Dr. Lee Silver points out in his book Remaking Eden , that once humans were able to fertilize a human egg outside of the womb they had “taken control of their own evolution”. People seem to fear science and their fellow human beings so much that they would rather leave everything in God's (or Mother Nature's) hands. There is also a lot of nonsense about a child conceived through cloning having an identity problem, thinking of themselves as a “second somebody else”. Others worry what psychological harm might be done to someone who sees their older twin at say, the age of 63, and therefore “knows” exactly what he or she will look like at that age. This “theory of trauma” really gives me a chuckle because I can tell you that as a young man of twenty, I could look at any number of 63-year-olds (my current age, as of today) and “know” (even be traumatized by) what I would look like at this age. I didn't need to see an aging twin to know the terrible toll age takes on everyone. Jack Nichols: There have been several articles recently--from Japan, Australia and now in the USA (Salon) that-- out of the blue-- are emphasizing that gay males may soon be able to reproduce. You started with this view--although then, because Dolly was a female-- it seemed only females could be cloned. Then, because you realized that human cloning is such a volatile issue, you felt it best not to mention gay issues because human cloning is for all of humanity and need not be linked to gay issues. How does it make you feel to see the gay factor re-enter the cloning debate? Randolfe Wicker: Seeing the “gay issue reinserted into the cloning debate” makes me want to throw up. It isn't the idea that the issue is being raised. It's the fact that with the exception of one brave lesbian couple in Baltimore, the debate about “gay reproduction” is being waged totally by heterosexuals. The “gay establishment” is simply sitting out the debate. Or, worse, subtle suave homophobic writers are using them as unwitting ploys. Let's look at some of the highlights of the Salon article. The description of me was anything but positive. It says: “Meanwhile, Randolfe Wicker, an unofficial spokesman for human cloning founded the Clone Rights United Front, mixes science and gay rights activism." Unofficial spokesman? See the home page of the Human Cloning Foundation who I am both their CEO and THE official spokesperson. And I haven't mixed the two for over three years. . I've tried to 'go back into the closet' for the good of the human cloning movement. “Currently the director of the Human Cloning Foundation, Wicker argues for human cloning as a means to copy himself in the name of reproduction and feels strongly cloning should be used by any and all persons who wish to do the same." I never argue for the right “to copy” myself. I argue for the right of my unique later-born twin to have his turn at life. I argue not 'in the name of reproduction' but as an exercise of my reproductive rights and my religious right to have my genotype live on into another lifetime. “Clearly, with Dolly, the path to immortality has forked, creating options in reproduction that go beyond or around the 'man and wife' route and focus on mixing DNA."
Now, this Salon article was annoying on many levels and confusing on others. For instance, Felicia Park-Rogers, director of Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere in San Francisco, was described in one sentence as “resolutely opposed to human cloning for reproduction-which she views as an act of pure narcissism (Am I wrong to assume she is calling me a narcissist?) Then in the next sentence, she is quoted as saying “the bearing of children by way of egg nuclear transfer is a perfectly ethical option for gay and straight parents.” This left me a bit confused. Was cloning a “perfectly ethical option” or was it an exercise in “pure narcissism”? I thought it was time to have a chat with Felicia Park-Rogers. Perhaps we could discuss matters a bit. I thought it might be an opportunity for some “consciousness raising”. I called their offices. A woman answered. I'm terrible at names and was hurriedly scanning the Salon article since I'm even worse at hyphenated names when the woman who answered volunteered: “Felicia Park-Rogers? There are only two of us here. Who should I say is calling?” “Randolfe Wicker from the Human Cloning Foundation.” I replied, “I'd like to talk to her about some quotes in the February 1, 2001 Salon article.” “Could you spell that name for me? And what was the name of the organization?” The woman replied as if unsure she had heard either name correctly. I complied. “I just want to discuss with her some of the issues raised by this article,” I continued. “I felt it was basically homophobic in tone. I think we should talk.” “Well,” the woman responded, “let me see if she is available”. A fairly long silence followed. I wondered about only two people in the office and why “availability” was something not obviously apparent. Perhaps I was having an attack of narcissistic angst. “I'm sorry'” the woman informed me upon returning to the phone, “she is in a meeting.”
I would urge readers to see the Salon article and its discussion about the possibility of having male eggs fertilized by male sperm so a child might be born with two fathers and mixed DNA. Of course, the bioethicists were there worrying that there might be a “loophole” in British law that might allow such a thing to happen and fretting : “Would society accept such motherless children?” ( I would hope so.) Salon's homophobic touches were masterfully done. A “gay friend of mine” told her his response to the idea of male eggs: “That's creepy.”(No offense here, of course, because the author has a gay friend and he's the one saying it is creepy.) We learn that he really supports the idea because he's for reproductive freedom but was “not determined to have children of his own genetic makeup and views adoption or surrogacy as perfectly suitable alternatives”. Obviously, he was a typical young gay male who was probably much more focused on who would be at the club Saturday night than he was on the idea of spending the next twenty-five years raising the cast-off unwanted child of a heterosexual tryst.
A human egg would have its nucleus replaced with the nucleus of a sperm, thereby creating a “male egg” which could then be fertilized by the sperm of another male to produce a child. All of this was speculative, of course, and huge obstacles needed to be overcome. The most significant problem was with something called “imprinting”. The 23 pairs of male and female chromosomes complimented each other and blended together like two sides of a zipper. Two sets of male chromosomes would not compliment each other in this fashion. For that reason I had viewed the concept of all male reproduction as somewhere between “future scientific possibility” and “science fiction”. Such “imprinting problems” were of no concern to most major gay news organizations. They eagerly embraced the concept of all male parenting and ran glowing accounts about its possibility. The Salon article noted that “this could be done with the DNA of two female eggs as well”. Contemplating male sperm fertilizing a male egg was complicated enough. How one female egg might fertilize another baffled me. This was a “question” for someone with a better understanding of genetics than myself. Fortunately, I have among my growing network of professionals, Dr. Hunter O'Reilly. who has a doctorate in genetics, ran a banner supporting The Human Cloning Foundation at the bottom of her own website www.ArtByHunter.com and even wore 'Yes to Human Cloning” buttons to lectures and exhibitions of her art exhibitions which creatively used scientific imagery. “I'll forward this piece of nonsense (in my opinion) to you. (the Salon article) I wonder about the allegation of 'egg-egg fertilization'?” I'd emailed her. “Allegation makes it sound so negative,” Dr. O'Reilly responded, making me feel like a male version of Felica Park-Rogers. “I actually thought of this possibility and talked about it every so often to people before I ever heard anyone suggest it….I would get some odd confused looks when I mentioned this possibility to people. I think it is an interesting theory, but I am not so sure how practical it is right now.” Well, there is nothing more sobering than to have a real expert tell you when you are wrong. That's the way your knowledge grows. “As we know,” Dr. O'Reilly continued, “science fiction has become science reality many times….” “As I am sure you know, women have two X chromosomes which determines their gender as a woman, and men have both an X and a Y chromosome, the Y chromosome determining their gender as a male. With two women having genetic children, you could only have girls. Whereas two men having children could have both boys and girls. If you ever just got two Y chromosomes together, that embryo would not be viable.” See what I mean about having “a most educated and brilliant team of professionals holding me aloft”! And while we're exploring the frontier of possibilities, a recent news story said that it would be possible to produce both sperm and eggs from the same stem cell culture. I recall that all of us begin as females in the womb. This latest development would mean that from one person you could produce a stem cell culture that might be able to produce both an egg (which an adult male can't produce) and sperm. I discussed this with another physician. If that were to happen and you fertilized the egg with the sperm both of which had the same DNA, would the resulting child be a later-born twin of the original person? Or would this always-random “collision of egg and sperm” possibly produce an entirely new unique individual? “Good question.” My physician friend responded. “I think it might be a little of both.” So, you can see why cloning is such a fascinating “mental adventure”. You answer one question and three others arise. It is one of the things that keeps me going. Jack Nichols: Although The New York Times Magazine initially covered you, in 1997 and, in fact, ran a bunch of cloned photos of you, they recently interviewed you but then put their focus on the flying saucerites, the Raelian religious group in Canada, an article that could be called, I suppose, a put-down of cloning. I'd already concluded last year that The New York Times Magazine seems to have been taken over editorially by neo-conservative propagandists, as witness Andrew Sullivan's bylines therein. You've always been a media whiz kid. Do you think so too?
Randolfe Wicker: Yes, Jack the New York Times (Sunday) Magazine ran a cover feature on human cloning in its February 4, 2001 issue The cover spoke volumes. Two little babies sitting on a big green Alien hand with a comic book mantra of multiple titles: “LAB OF THE HUMAN CLONES!” “Parents Seek To Duplicate DEAD CHILD' “Is this MADNESS?!” “RICH U.F.O. SECT BEHIND SCHEME!” “Scientists say, “IT CAN BE DONE!”
The story focused on the Raelians, a space-cadet cult, who have been out selling cloning to all comers. You might recall that they had a press conference in San Francisco and announced that they could clone a child that shared the DNA of two male or female couples. Actually, I have been denouncing them as rip-offs. The writer never kept her appointment to interview me but did talk to some supporters' in the movement. Unlike the WIRED magazine story, this writer really didn't show how these people were peddling a product that they couldn't deliver, something that would get anyone but a religious outfit arrested for. Instead, the writer did focus on a broader and more important aspect of cloning, the way it was becoming a “religion of science” and was “promising immortality through technology” to those who yearned for it. I think the New York Times Magazine has gone downhill in many ways. It seems especially bad in science. Actually, I should say that its coverage of scientific issues is very uneven. It had a great article about how people can sort sperm to have a daughter or a son as they choose. Then it fell in love with the idea of growing human stem cells in human eggs and living to be 150 years old. (Doubtful science to many.) This last article was “dead” on delivery. They had gone to press with a feature on a group that weren't only fraudulent but who had days before publication been totally pushed out of the spotlight by real fertility doctors with facilities and track records who announced the formation of an international consortium of physicians seeking to perfect and achieve cloning reproduction for infertile couples. The Times would not have published this article, in my opinion, if it had been one week later. I am sure that they are embarrassed by it. Magazines and publications change over time. The New Republic has become ultra-conservative. The Times magazine also seems to have become somewhat retrograde. However, the New York Times itself and its science section is second to none Jack Nichols: One thing you and I both noticed back in 1997 when you got immediate attention from mainstream newsmagazines, was how the gay and lesbian press kept altogether mum (except for GayToday and Baltimore's foremost gay newspaper) about what you were saying. For a time, there were three pioneer activists--you first, then Frank Kameny and Ann Northrop--willing to speak out positively about human cloning. I know that you approached Alternative Family Magazine offering an article, and although you surely approve of that magazine's concept, you were disappointed because they were so "Leave it to Beaver," as you said. Do you think the gay press could use some more boldness? What about the national organizations like HRC and NGLTF? Randolfe Wicker: I am so far beyond caring about what the gay press and organizations like the HRC and the NGLTF say or do these days. I was interviewed by National MSNBC TV two days ago for a spot on Peter Jennings' Evening News. Canadian Public Television is broadcasting a program shortly. I was on Canadian Public radio yesterday. I spent one day last week working with the Japanese Daily, the major newspaper of Japan with a circulation of eight million. I have been delayed this evening because a reporter from Japanese Public Television was here for four hours talking and taking notes. I am working with Britain's Channel 4 (a competitor of the BBC) on a continuing basis on several video productions. I have a young filmmaker making a documentary about my life as a cloning activist, as someone who is in the bowels of a new social movement being born. I will be in a segment on 60 Minutes in early March. I am supposed to be picked up on February 5th to be on Brian Williams' show on MSNBC which will be rebroadcast on CNBC where I will debate an opponent of human cloning. I actually think it says something about what is called “the gay press” when a lesbian couple who want to be cloned are more likely to be featured on major national media than they are in their own community newspapers. I think it is incredible (and disheartening) that Gay Today with its continuing coverage of this issue and my own position as a self-identified gay male (only when necessary and/or pressed these days) causes homosexuality and cloning to come up together in most internet search engines and the “gay establishment” is too nearsighted or self-absorbed to take the seat “at the table” we have secured for them.
Now, we are entering a new age of reproductive possibilities. Science promises to allow all of us to throw off the “scourge of barrenness” which has caused us to be judged as lesser beings and which has been one of the main arguments against recognizing the legitimacy and validity of our relationships. We are supposed to be a well-organized, wealthy, progressive enlightened and gifted community. Well, that might be the case but, frankly speaking, our leadership sucks. I am so many light years ahead of them all; I don't even want to bother looking back. Hopefully, sooner or later they will wake up and catch up. Jack Nichols: It seems that George W. Bush is in a quandary on one aspect of cloning-- he's asking if human fetal stem cell research should go forward. The fundamentalists oppose it. And yet it promises many great medical advances. What are these advances? And what do you think Mr. Bush will do? Randolfe Wicker: What George Bush will do about stem cell research is a big unanswered question. He will certainly stop the use of fetal tissue from aborted fetuses being used to help Parkinson's patients. However, his choice for heading the National Institutes of Health is both Pro-Life and pro-stem-cell-research. It will be interesting to see what happens when the religious right tries to stop all stem cell research while the centrist money businessmen in the Republican Party want to profit from the scientific advances in drugs and medical treatment that it offers. It will be a very interesting study in what I call “When the rubber hits the road…” Jack Nichols: We discussed recently how a major TV newsmagazine questioned you about your own religious view. I think the producer realized that you were defending human cloning on the basis of your right to your own 'religious' belief: namely that you have a stake in what you're now calling "partial temporary immortality" the extension of you through your duplicate life-form--your genotype--living beyond your own grave. Say something about that, would you? Randolfe Wicker: My term “partial temporary immortality” isn't very popular with many others in the human cloning movement. I've taken the same idea, tamed it down a bit and mollified them by saying that “My desire to live on through my later-born twin brother is no different than any parent's desire to live on through their children”. (And I'm giving poor Felicia Park-Rogers a hard time for being something of a mealy mouth?) Yes, Jack, that old saying is true: “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” You join the “big boys”, that small clique of publicly recognized talking-head authorities, and you start talking out of both sides of your mouth like the rest of them. Yes. Cloning blurs the line between life and death. If my genotype lives on into another lifetime, I will have denied death its traditional totality. That doesn't mean that “I” live on, just that special formula which is me. That is enough for me. It is a “partial temporary immortality” but look at the term itself and you can see it is an oxymoron. For those who don't know the term “oxymoron” (I didn't for years), it means a self-contradictory concept like saying someone is a brilliant mental retard. Jack Nichols: As the years have rolled by since Dolly was born, you've been able to see some necessary changes made in the way you present the concept of human cloning. For example, you realized it was impolitic to refer to a cloned-baby as a clone, that it detracts from the humanity of the child. What are a few other such strategic realizations you've had? Randolfe Wicker: Yes, I object to the term “clone” because it is a dehumanizing word. It brings to mind, not human beings or little children but robot-like subhuman zombies. It is interesting how every “debate” develops its own “terminology”. For instance, we early gay activists used to say we were fighting for “civil rights for homosexuals”. But that was a big long awkward phase. With Stonewall, that cry was changed to the verbally easier cry for “gay rights”. I am still trying to figure out what right is specifically “gay”? To be safe on the streets and in your home? To be secure in your employment? To not be discriminated against? How do any of those “rights” stop being “civil” and become “gay”? I've never figured that one out. However, the Religious Right has. They say 'gay rights' are 'special rights'. I think we made a blunder there. Likewise, in the cloning debate, whenever someone uses the term “replication”, you can be sure that they are anti-cloning. Even the word has a certain moral cadence to it. Remember in the documentary Tongues Untied (about black gay males) the scene in which you just saw the preacher's mouth as it rolled and curled up and spat out the charge that “homosexuality was an abomination”. The linguistic cadence of “abomination” is extraordinarily similar to that of “replication”. Cloning is “reproduction” because it is the passing on of one's genes to another generation. Replication is like Xeroxing, making exact copies of something that gets fainter and fainter with each copy. Jack Nichols: You often refer to your unborn twin brother. Now that you're older than most dads, what if you're no longer around to care for him? Randolfe Wicker: What if I am not around to care for you unborn twin brother? I never intended to raise him myself. At best I would just be a “special uncle” in the family, someone who would have a special bond and understanding for how he thinks and feels. I had a “special aunt” in my own family who was like that and we weren't even 'clones'. I'd provide support for education and such. I wouldn't discriminate against gay couples but I would probably choose a heterosexual couple who had gay relatives and were comfortable with my later-born twin's being either homosexual or heterosexual. I am convinced, 85% or more so, that he will in fact be heterosexual. Why? Well, to begin with the odds of an identical twin being gay if the other is gay are only 50-50. The circumstances of my birth were somewhat unusual. My mother had a very difficult delivery that went on for many hours. Because of this, a large water bubble developed on the top of my head. My head was nearly as large as my body. They told my mother that I was a normal and healthy child but wouldn't show me to her for two days after birth. Finally, when my mother became insistent and demanded:” Why are you hiding my child from me? He must have died. Why won't you let me see him?” They relented. A nurse placed a napkin over the top of my head to hide its size but at the moment the nurse presented me to my mother, the napkin fell off. My mother shrieked in horror. She thought she had given birth to a Mongolian Idiot. They assured both my parents that I was normal. They said the water bubble would disappear within thirty days. It took nearly a year. My mother described to me how “Your father always had faith in you. We would walk around the room and your father would say,' See how his eyes follow us. He's OK ' I'm a genes-are-destiny type person. However, given the rejection by my mother at birth, plus the fact that she couldn't nurse me because she had 'inverted nipples', leads me to think that perhaps I didn't have a heterosexually-inspiring-bonding with the opposite sex at birth like most men do Actually, that isn't an issue with me. I do find it amusing how writer's like Lori Andrews choose to print only the first part of my comment on what it would be like to watch my later-born twin grow up to be heterosexual, get happily married and have the family I always dreamed of as a child. 'Perhaps,' I would say to myself: 'Gosh, I really missed out on a big thing in life by not being straight and having a wife and kids.' " This always gets quoted but the second part of what I've say has yet to see print anywhere. I say: “On the other hand, if my later-born twin married a harridan who made his life miserable and had hideous unruly kids, I'd probably slap myself on the head, give a sigh of relief and declare, 'Thank God I was gay!' " Jack Nichols: Thank you Randy, as always, for continuing to be a bold adventurer, pioneering an unusual path where, no doubt, you've seen a special human need that others haven't. If your later-born twin had a harridan wife and unruly children that drove him mad, you'd say thank God you're gay? Hmmm. Well, we'll end on that highly spiritual note. |
Randolfe Wicker 
Wicker as featured in Wired magazine 
It was just so organizationally, so totally, so disgustingly political correct . It reminded me of the Human Rights Campaign Fund which dodged the issue of human cloning as a means of same sex reproduction when queried by a reporter for Genre magazine but embraced Republican Senator Al D'Amato's bid for reelection. Oh well, I am so glad I left the gay movement when I did. We stood for something years ago.
Wicker always has been good at using the media to promote his causes 
Wicker (right) with the head of the Raelian religion 
© 1997-2002 BEI