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By Randolfe Wicker
“It's not yet possible,” Mackellar elaborated in a BBC radio interview, “and I am sure it's going to take quite a few years before it is possible.” To the knowledgeable, this vision of the future might best be compared to John F.. Kennedy's declaration in 1960 that “within this decade, we will land a human being on the moon.” A huge problem lay between the dream of male couples being able to have children and its realization. Unlike simple human cloning which would allow two lesbians or even a single woman to bear a child conceived through cloning, the child of an all male couple would have to overcome a major obstacle called “imprinting”.
One of the interesting things about both the gay community and the gay press is how only a few comprehend heterosexual reproduction. This is understandable. However, history has a funny way of putting “us all” in the same boat. As a young gay male in the 1960s, I thought of “condoms” as something heterosexuals had to worry about and deal with. Little did I dream that in my middle and old age I would be as much in need of condoms as any heterosexual! So, the story of possible male-male reproduction hit the airwaves and stirred up even the exploitative opportunists, the “snake oil” salespeople. Topping the list are a Montreal based religious group called the Raelians. Their prophet, Rael, claims he was abducted by aliens in 1974 and taken back to the home planet of the Elohim where he had lunch with numerous other prophets like Buddha, Jesus Christ and Mohammed. I will insert here a copy of the press release that they sent to me: Press Release from CLONAID October 9th, 2000 Invitation To Rael's Press Conference, Founder Of CLONAID - The First Human Cloning Company RE: Human Cloning Will Allow Gay Couples To Have Children
RAEL, who is also founder and spiritual leader of the Raelian Religion (www.rael.org) will be in Monterey on October 12-15 because he is also a race car pilot and will participate in the Speedvision World Challenge race at the Laguna Seca tracks. He will be driving a Porsche which will be the first car in the world to be sponsored by a human cloning company: CLONAID. For any additional information or an interview with Rael, please contact Nadine Gary 702-497-9186 publicrelations@clonaid.com www.rael.org/press Now, I understand only about four journalists attended this press conference. I have very mixed feelings about this group. They are openly “gay friendly”. I know many of their members and they are loving and loveable people. However, I feel that they “exploit” the issue that is central to my life. And in this instance, they “target” the gay community seeking people desperate enough and naive enough to give them $200,000 or more to simply have a kid. You can go to the www.humancloning.org web site and look under “Frequently Asked Questions” and you will find two very tortured commentaries I've posted regarding “The Raelian Religion” and also about “Crazies Hijack the Movement”. This is really all a lead-in (the great thing about the Internet is that you are not limited to 1200 words!) to a description of an interview I did with the Canadian Broadcasting System a couple of days ago. This is simply my own account written to friends and open-minded journalists like Jack Nichols here at GayToday. It was just a letter which I will now share with you, for what it is worth, so you can have a special insight into the politics and issues involved in human cloning: Friends: Just thought I would tell you that the Canadian Broadcasting people were here and we had a good hour or more of taping. I was able to set them up with a performance artist name Phoebe LeGere who is a Vassar graduate, plays three instruments, speaks French, sings in 4 and 1/2 octaves. Apparently, Phoebe really blew them away with her talent and her beauty. She wants to clone herself because she is so talented so perhaps she might come across as egotistical. But they say her paintings were incredible and her ability on the accordion was stunning. I also had Karen Latimer come by who wants to continue her family blood line. She sees the faces of her mother and her grandmother when she looks into her later-born twin's face. Karen always does well. I also had Christopher Haddon, a very articulate gay male 41 year old internet technician who would ideally like to "meet someone, have a lifelong relationship, a house, white picket fence and 'kids'" except that he is homosexual. So, his take was that he was excited by the possibility of having children, preferably with the combined genes of himself and his loved one. However, he thought that having a child and raising it on his own would be too difficult. I defended "everyone's reproductive rights" whether they were married or single, infertile or fertile, to reproduce in the manner of their choosing. I also insisted that cloning was an exercise in religious freedom since I felt it gave one's "genotype" a partial, temporary immortality. However, I debunked the very idea of "immortality" since even if we stopped the aging process, sooner or later we would be hit by lightning, run over by a bus, etc. and would meet our mortal end.
I said that I felt the Raelians were "exploiting" cloning, taking advantage of the wonderful young women in their group who were willing to be egg donors and surrogate mothers, for financial gain and as a means to make "their prophet" somebody in the history of the world.
I also defended "multiple cloning", pointing out that I thought that it would be relatively uncommon but that it would create another layer of relationship in our society, that of a "genetic clan". That if a dozen clones of Jimmy Carter were born at different times to different mothers and raised in different environments, then if one of those "later-born identical twins" were orphaned, quite likely one of the other older identical twin brothers would be more than willing to take over the parenting. I said I thought that the first child conceived through cloning quite possibly was already here or on its way, that after reading Mark Eibert's stunning testimony to the California Cloning Commission, that I was convinced that the first person to undertake cloning would not necessarily be someone seeing it as a challenge and possibl,y for money and fame as originally outlined in my editorial "When Where? How?" but that it would probably be an infertile fertility doctor who wanted to have children, felt that she/he had the right to have children genetically related to themselves, had the skills necessary and quite likely would not even announce the fact that this had been accomplished until years later. I borrowed on the example of artificial insemination from Dr. Gregory Pence's book ReCreating Medicine. First discovered in 1862 by I. Marion Simms, denounced from the pulpits after the article was published, then not actually done until 25 years later. The key part of that story is that although it was done in 1887, the event was not announced until the nineteen teens, 30 years later, by the doctor who had done it and did not come into widespread use until ninety years after the first article had been published. I hit on a new theme with these interviewers, that was "cloning" as a cure for the universal sense of personal isolation that sits in the heart of every human being (except identical twins), that most people spend their lives trying to find others with whom perfect communication is possible and who totally understands how they feel and behave, that most people do this through seeking out of marital mates, or very close friends, but that ultimately cloning would be the real answer to this problem. I speculated that once people saw the special nature of the relationship between originators and their later-born twins that many more people would be attracted to cloning although it would never begin to compete with old fashioned reproduction. So, that is a quick run down. A writer from Penthouse talked with me yesterday. He'd attended the Raelian summer week long meeting. He is focusing on the Realigns in his article. There was sexual activity at the campsite but of a civilized sort, people going off to their own tents, etc. However, Rael preaches that the Elohim greatly value feminity. Apparently, they have a "transvestite dance" one night during their summer meeting in which each gender tries to become the other in a serious as opposed to "spoof" manner. Quite interesting. Also amusing was the Dr. Seed told him that he wouldn't talk with someone writing for a magazine "that purloined pornography". More later Cloningly yours, Randy P.S. Here is our |
Can male couples like the one featured here on the cover of Hero magazine ever hope to have children of both of their genetic codes?
RAEL 
© 1997-2000 BEI