" GayToday and the Badpuppy web site have really been the muscle of this movement. While history was being made GayToday has been present, recording the story." Randolfe Wicker, Public Relations Director Clone Rights United Front, The World's First Pro-Human Cloning Activist Organization Editor's Note: Randolfe Wicker, a movement pioneer, was the first openly gay man to go on radio and TV in the early 1960s. His early exploits are detailed in such histories as Straight News, (Edward Alwood, Columbia University Press) and Sexual Politics/Sexual Communities, (John D'Emilio, Chicago University Press). Earlier this year, immediately following the birth of Dolly, a cloned sheep, Wicker pioneered another controversial cause, human cloning. Two prominent movement activists, Franklin Kameny, Ph.D., and Ann Northrop, agreed with Wicker publicly that cloning is soon to be an option which no state or federal laws will be able to prevent. In late spring, Wicker and Dr. Kameny attended governmental hearings on cloning held by a federal Bioethics Committee at the request of President Clinton, and they upbraided timid scientists who, they said, had become mired in a host of inconsequential questions. Badpuppy's GayToday was the first publication to cover the birth of the human cloning cause (see GayToday's continuing series on cloning) and, as a result, its Internet address appeared internationally in a variety of major magazines and newspapers. Pat Robertson's 700 Club, hoping to further demonize same-sex love, rushed to publicize both Wicker's cause and GayToday's address, used as proof that "the homosexuals are eager to clone themselves." Since the arrival of Dolly and Wicker's Clone Rights United Front, (CRUF) GayToday has kept a steady eye on the pro-human cloning cause. Initially, as Wicker notes in the following letter to GayToday's editor, there was hostility and confusion—in both the mainstream and the gay press. A number of scientists, including Dolly's godfather, Dr. Ian Wilmut, downplayed the possibility that human cloning might be an end result of current cloning experiments. But now, as the year draws to a close, both Wicker and GayToday have been vindicated somewhat by a change in public perspectives that has taken only 10 months to materialize. On December 2, the front page of the New York Times headlined: "On Cloning Humans, 'Never' Turns Swiftly into 'Why Not?' " while on December 5 in the same newspaper, Laurence H. Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, penned an Op-Ed article titled "Second Thoughts on Cloning" in which he admits that he no longer favors an outright prohibition on human cloning. Such evidences of change found me requesting from my old gay comrade-in-non-arms, Wicker, as founder of the world's first militant pro-human cloning activist organization, a statement about how he now sees the cause for which he has labored since creating CRUF in February. He writes: Dear Jack: My word processor is malfunctioning. Oh, for the good old days of manual type-writers…… Well, the world, at least that small thinking educated informed part of it, seems to be catching up with reality. From the beginning, this entire debate has been a prisoner of the horrific images fostered around it by science fiction. Cloning has literally been the literary whipping boy from the beginning: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World populated by cloned slaves; Hollywood's Boys from Brazil, with all those little Hitlers getting ready to rule the world in the decades ahead. By comparison, Coma's cloned bodies floating in tanks waiting to be used as spare body parts could almost be called "benign." Indeed, until recently, there literally wasn't a single pro-cloning image anywhere. This has finally commenced changing. The TV movie, Cloned, presented the scientist doing the cloning as a morally-complex man who believed he was "doing good"—even though he was obviously misguided. More importantly, the story was told through the eyes of the dead boy's mother. She undergoes wrenching emotional trauma seeing replicas of her son living as members of other peoples' families. In the end, the "mad" but brilliant and misguided scientist is exposed and punished not so much for having cloned her son, but for doing so without permission. The touching emotional climax shows her and her husband adopting one of the reproduced little ones, thereby replacing their lost son. Ironically, the idea of replacing a lost child with a genetically identical twin conceived through cloning, has been one of the recurrent "positive" scenarios mentioned even by cloning opponents as "one possible argument for cloning." The millions who watched that movie were presented with cloning as a healer of parental grief. For most of them, it was probably the first positive idea about the subject they had ever been exposed to. I would describe it as a "breakthrough" in much the same way the movie Suddenly Last Summer was for homosexuality in the 1950s. Now, The New York Times breathlessly tells us that scientists who declared "they would never clone a human being," a few months ago are now "considering" it, that the federal government is financing research on techniques for cloning rhesus monkeys, that doctors are saying a later born twin could save some of their cancer patients by supplying bone marrow for transplants, etc. Curiously, one of the most horrifying, intolerant quotes included in the first major report on cloning in either Time or Newsweek magazine, was made by a Jesuit in response to just such a suggestion about cloning someone to save his or her life: "I can think of no circumstance in which the cloning of a human being would be justified," he declared, obviously placing theological correctness ahead of human life. It was one of the enraging idiocies of the early cloning debate that made me vow to be heard on the subject. Indeed, in studying the emerging changes in the public debate over cloning, I look to see if our own efforts have had an impact. In some ways, I'm certain we have. But sometimes, I'm left to wonder. For instance, the New York Times story quotes Professor Lori Andrews of the Chicago-Kent College of Law as saying that unless you can prove there is actually going to be harm, then we should allow it." Funny, but that is virtually the exact wording from our very first CRUF leaflet, the final thought in our Clone Bill of Rights which I faxed to the editor of a law journal in Chicago. The article continues on about how quickly public attitudes have changed toward cloning as opposed to a slower acceptance in the past of other innovative fertility technologies like artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, freezing of human embryos and surrogate motherhood. Public attitudes simply catch up with technology quicker these days. Not too long ago, a lot of people believed in Martians. During the 50s and the 60s, the possibility of "life on Mars" was a real subject for debate. Sojourner's visit to Mars killed that debate just like the first lovable babies conceived through cloning will make today's naysayers look like leftover members of the Flat Earth Society. The Times story touches on something which I suspect is going to grow into one of the major debates about cloning: the possibility that, in The New York Times own words, "It would allow a living person to be reborn, in a sense, only at a later time." I can't help but feel Gina Kolata, the Times science reporter and author of the December 2, 1997 story, read the Clone Diana: One Good Lifetime Deserves Another leaflet I sent her. I don't think anyone else has really raised that issue. Kolata also mentions that grieving parents may want to reproduce a terminally ill child. The history and emotional forces tied up with this issue are extraordinary. One of the earliest cloning-related news stories concerned an actual incident in which the parents of a terminally ill child slowly dying for lack of a compatible bone marrow transplant being found, decided to have a second child which would have about a 25% likelihood of having the needed compatible bone marrow. They had the second child, lucked out, and used that child's bone marrow to save their first child's life. This true story was the lead into the question asked the good Jesuit which I described earlier. This story, or an identical event, was the focus of a heart-tugging report recently on a major TV news magazine (I think it was 20/20). I'm a devoted fan of tear-jerker stories, real or imagined, and cried my eyes out this time around. So touching! So beautiful! The questions the reporter asked closely paralleled those raised about cloning. "Does the second child feel like he was brought into this world as a source of bone marrow for the older sibling? Does he feel less loved?" "Oh no," the mother answered as shots of the two children playing together filled the screen. "He brought us the gift of life! We love them both equally for the unique individuals they are." I am paraphrasing from memory here. But the emotional power of the story was overwhelming. It was obvious that such stories in the future, but revolving around cloning, would sweep away any lingering resistance in the ignorant backwaters of our society. Having said all that, I'll offer an opinion which will probably surprise you: I'm afraid that replacing a lost child through cloning would not necessarily be a good idea. Given the power structure between parent and child and the intense sense of loss and desire "to replace" the one lost, I think this may be one of those few circumstances in which a pre-existing identity being forced upon the later-born twin could actually impair his/her right to uniqueness and identity. However, let me hasten to reassure you that this same argument directed at a child conceived through the cloning of an adult has little, if any merit. It's just a construct in the minds of those opposed to cloning. Of course any child can be held prisoner and victimized by the desire of parents to live their lives through them. Interestingly, Mark Eibert, a California lawyer who hopes to challenge that state's recently passed ban on cloning, agrees with these reservations. Mr. Eibert hopes to give a legal voice to those infertile couples who feel they've been forcibly sterilized by the state of California, that law denies them not just human cloning technology but also access to the promising nuclear transfer techniques which will allow a woman to make her own eggs viable (which otherwise wouldn't be.) He had submitted an Op-Ed piece to the New York Times but they obviously chose the one by Laurence H. Tribe, a famous Harvard law professor, over his. In talking with Mark Eibert, I feel I've encountered a kindred soul, a comrade in the revolution you might say (Ha!) He feels passionately about all this but comes to it with a different perspective. In all the stories, columns, etc. about cloning, the voices still not being heard are those from people who consider cloning a significant, impacting force on their lives. Those who want to have children in this fashion through choice, as well as those who see it as a solution to their fertility problems have so far been unfairly excluded from this debate. Jack, it reminds me of those days when as young gay activists, we sat listening to "experts"—many of whom either knew nothing about homosexuality generally or our lives in particular—pontificate on what was then still a taboo subject. Ten months into this movement, with three public demonstrations, several highly visible presences at governmental and scientific conferences, and a flurry of press releases and leaflets behind us, our views are still ignored by these New York Times news updates. Yes, we made the New York Times Sunday magazine (June), Playboy magazine's After Hours column (November '97 issue). We've been heard on CBS and NBC national news broadcasts, been featured in USA Today news stories and had several nice reviews in New York City weeklies and Heterodoxy (a think-tank political opinion journal). But, the leading political journals—New Republic (they sniped at me personally)The Nation (our best bet) etc., have not given our IDEAS the coverage they deserve. Even the open-minded, mostly pro-cloning secularist humanist magazine, Free Inquiry, limited itself to "big name" experts. The gay press? Forget it. How ironic, The New York Times covers the research on cloning rhesus monkeys so AIDS research can be pursued while the gay press remains oblivious. Likewise, Professor Tribe, a heterosexual, I presume, says: "To ban cloning as the technological apotheosis of what some may see as culturally distressing trends may in the end, lend credence to strikingly similar objections to surrogate motherhood or gay marriage and gay adoption." One concrete accomplishment which, I think we can claim, is staking out a gay claim in this social debate. Having gotten "a seat at the table," so to speak. Re-member when the public discussions of civil rights would include issues affecting a few thousand Eskimos, while though affecting millions of gay people were not even mentioned. Our publicity about same-sex reproduction now being possible in mammals for the first time, no doubt led the New York Times report to muse upon the ethical implications of "whether a woman's decision to clone herself" was "worse somehow…than to obtain an embryo made-to-order with donated egg and sperm, the kind that many fertility clinics are already offering the infertile." Interestingly, such a desire on the part of some women to clone themselves is quite real. I've encountered several, most of them lesbians, who've gotten very excited about the idea. All this has reminded me to tell you that a friend has finally told me what Rush Limbaugh was saying about us last spring: "This gay activist Randal Wicker (he got my first name wrong which seemed to annoy my straight informant even more than the rest of Limbaugh's diatribe). "See," Rush reportedly fumed, "these gays want to clone themselves. That proves they want to recruit." Why it was shades of Pat Robertson's 700 Club report which declared the cloning movement was all just "a gay plot" just about the time The Advocate was giving us mocking coverage and OUT magazine just seemed perplexed about the issue generally. Of course, there was friendly coverage in the Baltimore Alternative and in a now defunct gay publication in Florida, edited by Hot Spots editor, George Ferencz. And not all big name lesbian and gay activists remained silent. Frank Kameny and Ann Northrop spoke out. In fact, Ann was on the Montel Williams Show and injected that not only could infertile heterosexual couples have children through cloning but "lesbian couples could also reproduce in this way as well." At that point, the audience, which had listened in quiet approval while the scientists explained how cloning could help infertile couples bear children, uttered a collective murmur of dissent accompanied by much shuffling of feet. That same morning, at the New York State Senate Hearings, each of the eleven scientists testifying mentioned "helping infertile couples." But not once did anyone breathe the word "gay" or "lesbian." In closing, let me point out that GayToday and the Badpuppy web site have really been the muscle of this movement. While history was being made GayToday has been present, recording the story. GayToday's account of the first demonstration, of our fight to be heard by legislative and professional societies, of our first "Cloning as a Tribute" event for Princess Diana, has left a historically-valuable account for future historians. Both you and I, Jack, have been there in the past making history ourselves, and witnessing history being made by others, during the early years of the gay rights movement. Today, several books come out yearly—sometimes barely noting or ignoring us—other times singing our praises and highlighting our accomplishments. There were even those weird times when we thought we had failed and only later discovered the significance of our actions. When I first picketed the U.S. Army induction center with a rag-tag band of Mattachine activists and straight radicals from the New York City League for Sexual Freedom, not a single reporter came. Most passersby ignored our leaflets. That evening I would have described the entire demonstration as "a flop." Likewise, when you picketed the White House for the first time, you got scant news coverage—the most detailed of which was an expose in Confidential Magazine about those "homos" who had the gall to picket the White House! I remember that we were thrilled to be written up in Confidential Magazine because they included Mattachine's address in the article—which brought in letters from all over the country. While we knew your demonstration outside the White House was history in the making at the time, I didn't discover that my own ignored demo was history-making as well. It just happened to be the very first demo for gay rights. I found it noted in a history book 25 years—yes, twenty-five—later. Hopefully, we'll live another twenty-five years and get credit due us on all this. One thing could delay that, of course, would be the birth of the first baby conceived through cloning turning out to be horribly deformed. I shudder to think of the birth of "Harry" the first baby conceived through cloning, wherein Harry would have three ears, one of which would come out of the middle of his forehead. Such an unfortunate event would certainly spark what Professor Tribe described in his waffling, but ultimately favorable Op-Ed piece, as "yet another wave of prohibitionist outrage"—a wave, Tribe continues speaking of today's current circumstances, "that I no longer feel comfortable riding." This concludes my thoughts for now. I've been promised--today--a chance to stand up and speak out in defense of cloning on Comedy Central. I'm going to wear a conservative black suit with a bright rainbow hankie tucked into the front coat pocket. Subtle, I think. Don't you agree? But, to steal the high ground from those smug, snickering humorists who may have the audacity to maintain that cloning is a "sin" I'm wearing a bright baby-blue sparkling sequin covered tie with glorious white angels on it. The sparkle may blind the audience, even short-circuit the cameras (hope they don't prevent me from wearing it) but I'm sure it will be good for a laugh (can't be too serious on Comedy Central.) More importantly, standing there, obviously respectable—with those pristine white angels sparkling upon my chest—representing, I'd like to think, the blessed spirits of the unborn waiting to find life through cloning—I will have claimed the moral high ground in the debate. Wish me luck. Bye Bye. Will talk to you later!!! Randy.