Kameny, as a scientist, repeats in the Times his original comments made over a year ago in GayToday and at last June's forum sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In both instances he'd responded to a "sound bite" comment made by a lesbian activist who'd observed jokingly that since female wombs are needed to clone, that women's increased control over reproduction might now extend to the creation of an all-female world.

The lesbian activist, Ann Northrop, made one effective TV appearance on behalf of cloning on the Montel Williams Show and others on nationwide radio programs where she made no appeals to such gender-exclusionary tactics. Her defense of human cloning, in fact, was exemplary.

But she'd failed to foresee the extraordinary furor prank remarks would give rise to, and when it became apparent that her jocularity had backfired she dropped out of the cloning debate, stunned by public reactions. In fact, as GayToday then reported, Ms. Northrop had been, for many years, an enthusiastic crusader on behalf of men's welfare, an active, arrested member of New York's ACT UP. She hadn't meant her remarks on men seriously.

Dr. Kameny's response to Sunday's New York Times Magazine reporter found the magazine putting its own new "Johnny–come-lately" spin— the possibility of artificial wombs-- on the media's continuously-tardy coverage of the human cloning issue, an angle Badpuppy's GayToday had publicized as long ago as March, 1997.

Each of the principal gay-identified spokespersons for human cloning has told GayToday about annoying instances of the media's misusing of their quotes following their pro-human-cloning interviews.

It appears, says Wicker, that the New York Times Magazine (which is separate editorially from the newspaper itself) treats science as a kind of entertainment and that its focus is put essentially on "the weird"—thus accounting for its treatment of cloning issues.

Kameny told GayToday:

"Yes, I am cited by name as predicting artificial wombs thereby eliminating the need for women in the cloning process, although the New York Times Magazine has restructured my remarks so that they come out with an overtone of sexism which was not present in my comments as I made them to the reporter.

"The reporter excerpted one small portion of my remarks which had a broader context, as I made them to her, to the effect that those discussing cloning seem to have an odd lack of vision as to what the future might be, and seem to be intellectually stuck in the current extremely primitive state of cloning technology."

Kameny was quoted as saying, "You take the cell, put it in there (the artificial womb), take care of it for nine months, open it and voila, a clone….no need for a uterus or a woman!"

Wicker believes such ill-usage of both Kameny's and Northrop's quotes allows ignorant heterosexuals opportunities to indulge their own darkest fantasies about gay or lesbian activist intentions. These fantasies include the elimination of one gender by the other, a war of the sexes scenario.

The Sunday magazine's angle on gay and lesbian cloning claims that lesbians "can already reproduce, somewhat asexually, through artificial insemination, but gay men have never had a chance." Wicker critiqued this statement head on:

"It misses," he said, "the important aspect of cloning for homosexuals—male or female—that is having kids that are entirely genetically theirs without having to become involved with the genes of a stranger and/ or a member of the opposite sex."

Wicker also pointed out that the magazine reporter had known that Raelians (a religion founded by a Frenchman, Rael, purportedly undertaking human cloning) do not, apparently, have the Bahama cloning facilities they claim to have, and yet the magazine gave the Raelian money-making spin, namely that $200,000 will assure the emergence of one's clone after the appropriate technology is perfected.

What the Clone Rights United Front director did like about the Sunday magazine's latest cloning coverage was the top billing it gave to Princeton biologist Dr. Lee Silver's new book, Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World. The distinguished author is quoted as saying he knows of scientists working in (secret) silence, unlike the financially-motivated Dr. Richard Seed, all eager to clone a human being.

Finally, however, the Clone Rights United Front director accuses the Sunday magazine of "pandering" to traditional religions with its concluding quoted statement: "Somebody is bound to invent a something and call it a 'soul chip' " says Rosalind Picard, a computer expert at M.I.T "But I do not think the soul could be imitated. The only way to impart souls is procreation."