Badpuppy Gay Today |
Tuesday, 09 September 1997 |
Randolfe Wicker, a pioneer of the gay movement who became the first openly gay man to go on radio and TV as such, hopes that the honoring of Diana can be accommplished in part by what he calls "doing exactly what she did so frequently and so well--offering hope, lessening despair, encouraging others to deal with complex social issues in a more enlightened fashion." Wicker, also founder and Public Relations Director of Clone Rights United Front, the world's first pro-human-cloning activist organization, believes strongly that there is a sure-fire way to lessen the despair surrounding Diana's death. "I've seen and talked to people who feel as I do," said Wicker, "we can save at least an important part of her." Immediately following the birth of the clone-sheep, Dolly, Randolfe Wicker (who has harbored for over three decades an intense preoccupation with ways to cheat death, including 1960s hopes for the research surrounding frozen animation) went directly to register Clone Rights United Front in Manhattan. He has spoken at major scientific forums (see GayToday's continuing series on cloning) and plans to distribute commemorative badges and have "a loving, peaceful, respectful presence at New York's memorial service for Diana," in the north meadow of Central Park, Sunday, September 14, 1997, at 2:00 p.m., just north of 97th Street. Wicker has moved beyond his initial statements and now wants to clarify that cloning is more than a reproductive freedom of choice issue. "Science's newly acquired ability en-ables an individual's genotype, his or her unique genetic formula," to physically survive even after the originator's death. "This promise,", says Wicker, "of a temporary partial immortality offers hope for change, a lessening of the totality of death. The painful loss of a loved one can be tempered by the knowledge that an identical twin can be conceived or has survived. In a commerative booklet adorned with warm, laughing photographs of the beloved Princess, photos surrounded by hearts and other symbols of affection, Wicker tells in his own words why he is commemorating Diana by suggesting that she be cloned: "Cloning cannot restore a lost personality. However, cloning can produce a later-born identical twin. This genetic double shares the deceased's genotype and carries the same inborn potential into a second lifetime. No longer does death have to mean total loss, Accepting the obliteration of "Going Quietly Into the Good Night." Certainly Diana, the "Queen of Hearts" would make this world's shortest list of "Those Worthy of Being cloned." Diana's twin, twenty or thirty years hence, would be living rebuke to the injustice of her cruel, violent, premature demise. Death would have been denied it's totality. Humankind must conserve and save its best. Some admirers of Diana, however, gently disagree. "Immortality is something that Diana already has," says Janus, a GayToday reader, "and she doesn't need to be cloned to assure that she gains immortality. She will be the people's Princess forever." |
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