In the wake of U.S. Senate speeches aimed against the furtherance of cloning research, Wicker bristles over what he believes are theological arguments bereft of common sense. "The radical anti-abortion right is using anti-cloning legislation as a tool to advance its anti-embryo research agenda," he says.

"We who support reproductive freedom and see cloning as part and parcel of that freedom find ourselves trapped between a rock and a hard place," Wicker told GayToday. " Faced with the raging insanity so abundant in Washington these days, we find ourselves rooting for the lesser evil, the Democratic bill. That human cloning is evil and should be outlawed is as obvious to our national leaders as was the obvious flatness of the earth to those in authority during Galileo's day."

In the Senate, a bill introduced by Republican Senators Bill Frist (Tennessee) and Christopher S. Bond (Missouri) threatens to stop all kinds of promising research offering hope to those suffering from AIDS, leukemia, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, spinal cord injuries, heart problems and severe burns.

A second bill, also opposed to human cloning is nevertheless, according to Wicker, less loathsome. Introduced by Democrats Senator Diane Feinstein (California) and Ted Kennedy (Massachusetts) it argues that the Republican bill goes too far, banning important research that will guarantee new preventative measures against many dread diseases.

An unorthodox political step found the anti-cloning bills sent directly to the Senate floor, bypassing the usual committee hearings beforehand. Clone Rights United Front has asked to represent its views through its Public Relations Director.

With the Clone Rights spokesman embracing—as the lesser of two evils—the Feinstein/Kennedy bill, Wicker echoes the two Democrats, who argue that passage of the Republican bill, as Feinstein notes, will "literally cause thousands of people to die needlessly" for lack of the treatments that cloning technology will make possible.

Wicker exults that the unanimous opposition to the Republican proposal from experts in the scientific and industrial communities has produced "a groundswell of support" for the Democratic proposal, with both moderate Republican Senators from the Northeast and diehard conservatives like Florida's Connie Mack opposing their Republican colleagues' bill.

The human-cloning champion calls the Senate's proposed vote ("without even holding hearings") the product of hysteria whipped up by renegade scientist Richard Seed. "Seed," Wicker admits, "is bad, but not because he wants to make cloning available to all, but because he is intent on pursuing that laudable goal in a reckless and dangerous fashion—without medical peer review."

In a letter to Jean Bethke Elshtain, author of an anti-cloning article in the neo-conservative magazine, The New Republic, Wicker noted that if Seed were to produce a deformed child conceived through cloning, this would be—for cloning opponents—a self fulfilling prophecy.

"For us (Clone Rights United Front)," wrote Wicker, "it would be both a personal human tragedy and a political nightmare. This poor deformed child would become the poster boy/girl for those repressive, closed-minded, intolerant religious fanatics who, for reasons beyond our understanding, feel so threatened by this new reproductive breakthrough."

"Obviously," Wicker says, "public opinion is definitely shifting in our favor. Not only is the cloning of human beings inevitable, it is quite possibly already underway. Remember the name 'Eve' when you finally hear the story. The reality is that children conceived through cloning will be the ones who finally win over the hearts and the minds of humankind and dispel the science fiction demons which now have such a terrifying hold on otherwise healthy minds."

Wicker's views got a measure of backing in both the Washington Post and the New York Times (February 10.) In the Post James Glassman, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, ridicules the prison term of up to 10 years—in the Frist/Bond bill-- for scientists who conduct cloning research, and, like Wicker, compares the Senate's rush to judgement by calling it a Galileo-like reinactment. An editorial in the Times upholding cloning research calls the Republican bill "a slapdash proposal."

"It would be a shame if the rush to ban cloning of people," says the Times, "ended up crippling biomedical research."