Badpuppy: All right, we're cooking.

Randolfe Wicker: HELLO Dolly!

Badpuppy: Dolly Defies Death. The recently-deceased, they say, can have an exact living replica made of them. You used to be very much interested in that freeze-your-corpse procedure.

Wicker: There's a rumor Walt Disney is supposedly frozen although his estate denies it. I don't know why this rumor continues. I think he probably really is frozen. If they clone Walt Disney, does his clone have the right to come back and take possession of Disneyland? That is an issue of great interest to folks in Orlando. But my interest is much broader. I want to tell you about the Clone Rights United Front. CRUF. And our stand is this: We demand the right to reproduce ourselves without interference of religion, politics, or society. There are all kinds of issues involved here. As a gay person I'll say that there's a gay issue.

The gay issue is sperm is no longer necessary, just DNA and the female body. Heterosexuality, the male/female equation of reproduction, is historically obsolete. All you need is a female body and some DNA. A woman can reproduce herself, as certain species already do, without the use of males. Two women could have a child together in the sense that one woman could give her DNA and have her lover's ovaries impregnated with her own DNA so they'd have a clone of the lover as a child. I think its a feminist issue also, because now that sperm is unnecessary the great society that we have which is so much intimated by the great tyranny of the phallus in which men rule the world and everything bends to their whim is suddenly threatened with the ultimate undermining thing and that is that the phallus' sperm is no longer necessary.

Badpuppy: So what would they be saying, or what are you saying?

Wicker: My DNA is too precious to let die Also, its a scientific frontier issue. All sorts of questions come to mind. The only place we could find any answers to these is in studies of identical twins. I understand when separated at birth--20 years later if one is fat the other is fat, even though they may have been raised in different families with different dietary habits. The similarities brought about by biology are much stronger than I think many of us question. I know Jack that you seem to think that nurture would be a greater thing, but it comes to my mind since I'm a gay person, if they clone me, would a clone son be gay too?

Badpuppy: Good question.

Wicker: If he was gay...

Badpuppy: It would answer your question.

Wicker: Well, it would be heavy evidence. DNA. Then they wouldn't be able to say we chose it willingly as some sort of "lifestyle" in quotes. You know? On the other hand you get other kind of questions like about Einstein. Say they cloned Einstein. The Einstein clone might be a genius, but then you wonder about the environment. Would he be a genius that was academically inclined to study the secrets surrounding relativity, the universe? Or would he just be a genius who got off on roaming around the internet playing cyberspace games with a bunch of playboys. Whether he'd be a disciplined academician like Einstein was?

So we get into all those other questions. Would my clone have the same awful handwriting that I have, that nobody else can read and sometimes I can't read it myself. I think its wonderful, cloning. I don't think people are going to settle any more for this random collision of random sperm and random egg. I mean if you're going to spend 21-25 years or whatever and you're going to give it a college education, do you really want to just settle for what pops out of the womb?

Badpuppy: Is birthing a womb-child like walking to the corner and offering somebody--a virtual stranger-- a free education, healthcare and food for the next twenty years?

Wicker: There's some of that, but a lot of parents think they can control the development. But the fact of the matter is, its just a game of Russian Roulette. You don't know what's going to come out of the random choice. You may end up with a screwed up, social misfit. Jeffrey Dahmer's family were very nice people. Ever see them on TV? They did everything to raise the boy right. That's a question too. Would a clone of Jeffrey Dahmer or a Bundy turn out to be a serial killer?

Badpuppy: I'm sure we've got Charles Manson waiting to give his skin away right now.

Wicker: Unfortunately, there are probably about 20 females who want to bear his clones. That's the frightening part, and maybe the negative part. But I do want to say that if you're going to spend 21 years raising a kid, it isn't just an ego thing, I mean think of how many people--and I was one of those victims of a father who named me Junior, and I gave that name up and chose my own name, Randolfe Wicker--But every one who has ever named a child Junior is really hoping that their child is a second THEM. Now they don't have to hope anymore, they can be absolutely sure by having their child a clone. There's no more doubt about it. They get what they want. They're going to get a copy of themselves.

Badpuppy: And what about the government getting ready to take control of cloning?

Wicker: How do these government people know before they think it through what's involved here. I turned on TV last night--in the middle of the night during a period of insomnia, and here was this guy, a typical, uptight, anal retentive born-again Christian type, though he didn't identify himself as such, and the question was "How about cloning?" and his position was "Well, it might have great potential for livestock but we want to take steps right now to make sure right now that it is never done to humans?" And the woman next to him said, "Well, I don't know, should we really rush to outlaw it, forbid it from happening before we even examine what the ramifications are, can't we talk about it and examine it for possible advantages or disadvantages first?" And this to me is a real fundamentalist reaction to the unknown, to change.

Lets face it, if women can have clones, their own-self clones, where they can have their own child or their lesbian-friend's child, they can control the outcome. Somehow this lays out all kinds of questions, this great mystique we've built up around man and woman and around Adam and Eve, I mean it could be Eve and Evette in the Garden of Eden in the Golden Age of Cloning.

Even if you didn't want to clone yourself, I mean a friend of mine mentioned that he possibly had a hereditary disease and he wasn't sure he'd want to be cloned because his clone might have the same diseases. It might be a real serious concern for some people. You don't want to have a random come out, but on the other hand, who of us hasn't known a child that was like a straight-A student, that had incredible musical ability, just the dream child that everyone wanted, that everyone in town looked to this child and said, "Oh what a wonderful person this child is." Wouldn't you want to have that child as your own?

The lady on the tube argued that there were good reasons for cloning. She says, "Suppose you have a child that's dying of cancer. Now this child's going to leave a void in your life. So why not simply clone the child and have second come along as the perfect replacement. I mean little Mary died but she lived on. This is Mary II, a clone of the original daughter.

Badpuppy: So the families of these recently deceased people should be clamoring to join you protecting their rights. Do you want to provide your new organization's address?

Wicker: CRUF, 506 Hudson Street, New York, New York, 10014. And another thing, last night in this debate, this guy who was so worried that cloning was going to happen said, "You know, when this becomes available in some banana republic..." And they showed Hollywood jokes about cloning--Woody Allen type stuff--and then they showed a movie about cloning Hitler in Brazil and a mad scientist says, "And we'll have Hitlers for the 80's, Hitler for the 90's and a Hitler for the Year 2000." Its interesting how people project their own fears, fear of the unknown. I don't want to have a Hitler for the 90's or the year 2000, I mean there's some DNA I'm glad they burned up, but you know what I'm saying, I mean the potential is so great.

Cloning is now inevitable. Now that we know how to do it, I'm convinced that incredibly wealthy men...I can not believe this passion. I mean this very sincerely, and very strongly I would give anything to see a clone of myself. If I had to take a hundred thousand dollars out of the bank today to have it done, I would do it--and I'm not that wealthy a man. And I know that people--the Donald Trumps, and people with millions and billions of dollars, and I believe that I'm not the only one who is absolutely possessed by this desire. I think that cloning is going to create an incredible tidal wave of demand that people are not expecting. Because these people who are so worried about it, they don't realize that people are so eager to see themselves perpetuated. I mean don't you realize all the Pharoahs of Egypt built pyramids thinking they would project themselves into eternity?

Badpuppy: I worry about people over-reproducing and overpopulating the other way, the old fashioned way, you know, sperm and such?

Wicker: That'll be the poor folks way. Little Richard said, "God promised us all eternal life, and now, here it is." But Little Richard also says he suspects there will be cloning of only a few black babies, only the blue-eyed blonde, white babies. Yes, it'll probably be a class thing. The only down side of this is that there will probably be too many Republican clones and not enough Democratic ones. There's nothing fair in life. Would Jesse Helms really want to clone himself?

Badpuppy: I hope not.

Wicker: He isn't that stupid. Certainly he has enough sense to go out and find some better person to clone.

Badpuppy: Or look in a mirror.

Wicker: Looks, that's another thing. There's Brad Pitt. I know some people who lust after Brad Pitt. He's not my ideal. I'd go back to the movie Death in Venice and get that blond the guy died watching walk down the beach. All over Europe they said he was a great androgynous beauty. But hey, say Brad Pitt. He aint gonna be gorgeous forever. You can have a thousand Brad Pitts, bring up a whole flock of Brad Pitts. Take your pick. You wouldn't have to be a multi-millionaire to get one. Not even a Hollywood producer.

Badpuppy: (Laughing) Think there might be clone slavery so folks could buy 25 Brad Pitts to surround them?

Wicker: Follow you around like a puppydog and do whatever you said? Well, I hate to think of that, but that's probably what the anti-cloners are going to be saying next week. I mean this is an evolving argument, Jack, and I've only just scratched the surface.

Badpuppy: We both saw the front-page cloning article in the New York Times. It quoted a Jesuit priest who said clones would be individuals, different in behavior and each with his or her own soul. I said, gads, the church is claiming clone souls before they're even born!

Wicker: What a kind gesture. I joked to my Catholic friend, Jerry, asking if clones have an extra dose of original sin because they're cloned, and if the church doesn't believe in cloning. Jerry said he didn't think so because if they'd been baptized, obviously their DNA would have been baptized too and so the clone people would be born pre-baptized. Clones that died in childbirth or shortly thereafter would go directly to heaven. These theologians, what would they say? They think in boxes. I think this will leave them a bit perplexed. I don't think the Vatican can answer that question.

Badpuppy: It beats their preoccupation always arguing that life starts somewhere in the sperm. (Laughter)

Wicker: They'll be left stuttering and have to pray to heaven for the answer.

Badpuppy: Have you heard that song about sperm from the Meaning of Life, the Monte Python film?

Wicker: The meaning of life is to perpetuate yourself forever through your DNA and through cloning.

Badpuppy: The sperm song, introduced to me by my friend David Evans, is in that Monte Python movie and goes like this: "Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate." (Laughter)

Wicker: Now God can be at peace. No sperm need be wasted because there's no need for sperm. All sperm is useless. Its not wasted anymore. Maybe masturbation won't be a sin anymore, we'll ask the theologians that.

Badpuppy: That's what they improperly base their anti-masturbation rap on... Onan (in Genesis) pulling out of his dead brother's wife and spilling his seed on the ground. God punished him, some think, not for masturbating, but for failing to carry on the tribal line by impregnating his dead bro's wife. I'd like the rehabilitate poor Onan, putting a little focus on God's overreaction in that instance. I suppose cloning will put all spilled sperm, no longer really needed, under a fading spotlight.

Wicker: I don't want to make a god out of Onan. I think his behavior is sort of like a crutch that eventually makes one's armpit sore after a while. (Laughter) They asked the editor of U.S. News and World Report what he thought of the cloning story, and I was flabbergasted, you know what he said?

Badpuppy: First let me tell you what I'm saying, that its THE story of THE century.

Wicker: That's what he said...the most important story that's come along in his lifetime.

Badpuppy: Right.

Wicker: You should go interview Dolly and her mother. I wanna know just how alike they are, in temperament? The questions I want to know about people, maybe we should be asking sheep? If one's gun-shy or one's friendly, or whatever.

Now if I had a clone son, and if you're right, that its nurture not biology, what if my son turned out to be a complete jerk? A reactionary, right-wing-Republican born-again Christian. Or he might not be a nerd, he might be a jock! These are all questions we can only speculate about, and unless we live to be over a hundred we probably won't get all the answers.

Badpuppy: To sum up?

Wicker: We who support Clone Rights United Front are entering this debate strongly demanding our right to reproduce ourselves. Every individual in this country has the right to reproduce himself or herself. Our DNA is our own sacred personal possession and society and politics and religion--no one has a right to control that DNA but us. And if we want to perpetuate our DNA into history, that's our God-given honor to our history and honor to our forefathers. Our progeny is us. Our progeny is us. Yes.

Badpuppy: You're leading a new movement to assure we don't lose self-control and personal ownership of our own DNA?

Wicker: Yes, interested people can contact me in New York City. My phone number between 1 PM and 8 PM. is 212-255-1439. Clone Rights United Front. CRUF. 506 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

Badpuppy: Lets be ruff and ready guys on behalf of CRUF.