"The card sticking out of Julio Belloso's shirt pocket expressed his feelings precisely. 'Clone Diana,' it read."

The article continues:

"I love her," said Mr. Belloso, 61, of Manhattan. "To have another one of her, it would be a good thing."

Demonstrating its appreciation for Diana by handing out commemorative badges, five activists for CRUF (Clone Rights United Front), the world's first pro-human-cloning activist organization, braved unknown possibilities of scorn to bring CLONE DIANA: One Good Lifetime Deserves Another badges to thousands of mourners like Mr. Belloso.

CRUF's public relations director, the indefatigable Randolfe Wicker, had faxed news releases, and as he passed out the Clone Diana badges 10 blocks from the site of the memorial service--a place to which police had carefully banished him, an editor, Monica Rivtuso from Manhattan Spirit, her pad in hand, seemed to take note of his every mood.

"We honor the memory of Diana, Princess of Wales," Wicker explained, "by doing exactly what she did so frequently and so well--offering hope, lessening despair, encouraging others to deal with difficult complex social issues in a more enlightened fashion."

"Free commemorative badges," he repeated, "honoring Diana...a dated momento of the day. Its dated on the back with a tribute to Diana."

The excited crowds swelled toward the cloning activists, their hands reaching out.

Wicker's was clearly the mood of a halleluyah-secular-preacherman. The quick-witted champion of human cloning--who has lost two long-term spouses to AIDS-- believes it is important to give aid and solace through cloning. Thousands of eager mourners took the commemorative badges from him in frenzies of rapt appreciation.

Then the Park Police arrived.

But not even that arrival stopped either Wicker nor Rivera, who both vigorously protested being moved away in an attempt to silence them, demonstrating the measured daring of activists unafraid to face legal retribution for making their little-understood statements.

The police, a 2-hour video records, initiated a series of blockages and access preventions. On this video they seem unduly concerned with the presence not only of cloning's passionate evangelist, Wicker, but of Sylvia Rivera, a transgender spokesperson of historic note. The several activists were banished from one site to another until, finally, they were sent ten blocks distant.

Outside the actual mourning site, CRUF continued, nevertheless, to flood the interior of Central Park with a cloning sentiment that had proved undeniably popular. Cameras recorded numerous passers-by, the Clone Diana badges pinned to their blouses and shirts. Initially, as Wicker told GayToday, he hadn't known what the public's reactions might be. Some, he feared, might be enraged by the thought. Instead, a sizable multitude embraced it.

So, secure in his sense of right motive, and of his careful planning too, Randolfe Wicker banished fear. A large Clone Diana sign (studded with glittering hearts around her smiling photo) was looped around his neck while he passed out the eagerly-snatched badges. Sylvia Rivera too (a character out of Martin Duberman's history book, Stonewall) was hawking the Diana badges, her approach in sync with the vibrant spirits of the mourners.

A third CRUF member, Eric Serxner, once again showed a hardy activist's committment such as when, on two earlier occasions, CRUF had unembarrassedly emerged into controversial public venues.

CRUF's members continued saying, in various ways, what their leaflet suggested, that cloning offers the promise of a partial immortality for Diana--or for any loved one-- a "lessening of the totality of death."

Prior to the arrival of CRUF members near the Central Park memorial site, Wicker did a live fifteen minute interview on The Bob Grant Show. The interviewer was sympathetic to the inevitability of cloning but the prospects of large scale cloning made him uneasy.

Wicker was told, in a discussion with Tony Carbonette at City Hall : "I'm afraid that the Episcopal Church may find your badges objectionable," , "You should contact them to discuss it. THEY are really the ones really in charge of this Memorial."

"So that's who THEY are," responded Wicker.

Wicker proceded to fax CRUF's materials to Dean Prichard of the presiding Episcopal Diocese. In telephone discussions he assured the Dean's secretary that CRUF intended nothing more than "a loving, peaceful and respectful presence" at the Memorial Service for Diana.

But the Dean, possibly conflicted with cloning on theological grounds, and knowing little more than did Wicker about the possible reactions to him from mourners, opted, perhaps, to order the keeping of Clone Rights United Front members outside Central Park. At least there is evidence, says Wicker, that this is what happened.

He had promised, Wicker said, to keep CRUF's members as distant from the memorial stage as the Church requested, mentioning as far as five hundred feet. Police so disrupted the stations of CRUF's stalwarts, however, that 10 blocks was as close as CRUF was to be allowed.

From this perch of street-corner banishment, Wicker is repeatedly seen in the 2-hour video stridently standing up to police attempts to restrict both his presence and the presence of human cloning sentiment, the controversial concept he represents.

But in spite of these police efforts, as Wicker chuckled happily, his idea was crossing the streets with dignity and ease, pinned to appreciative citizens' breasts, becoming a major statement at the Diana Memorial and showcased by the The New York Times.

Soon, promised Monica Rivtuso, her publication, Manhattan Spirit, would also capture the adventures of these Clone Diana activists. If so, Rivtuso may tell how Wicker, undaunted, upped the ante, distributing badges as police looked on, calling out "Banned by the Park Police," thrusting the badges forward, "Honor Diana!--show the Park Police that free speech is alive and well in New York City. We can't give 'em out in the Park, but you can wear them into the Park. Show the world that an idea can't be surpressed whose time has come! This is an historic document, the first cloning commemorative badge ever issued in the history of the world."

Only a few of the thousands of passerby taking the badges handed them back or voiced objections. Most asked for additional ones for friends or sought those which were already equipped with pins. Many showed dismay at police harrassment of the activists.

Around 2:30 p.m., with the Memorial Service already half over, the Park Police reappeared. The proliferating Clone Diana badges being worn in the Park had alerted them to CRUF's continuing presence blocks away.

"If you fail to comply," said a policeman, "I will have to give you a summons for 'failure to comply' and seize all your signs and materials."

Wicker perceived that his right to free speech was being violated. He also told GayToday that earlier too, he'd felt, when approaching officialdom to make clear his intentions, like a "hot potato" to be avoided.

"I'll take the first summons," Wicker told the officer. "I think you're wrong on that issue. We should have been allowed in the Park in the first place. I'll obey your request and step back behind the building." He did step back as the video shows.

Wicker got a second summons too, in spite of his moving in accordance with the officer's demand. CRUFS signs were seized and are shown being loaded on a police van.

Is City Hall deliberately creating the human-cloning-movement's first martyr? Or are other kinds of surprises in store? Wicker says he's given the videotape to ACLU personnel, hoping to fight the charges against each member of CRUF.