6.22.2008

Also, negligent lawyers

In the post below, I challenged the blogosphere's prominent marriage defenders and bioethicists to explain why they aren't calling for a Missouri-style "egg and sperm" law banning the use of modified gametes. While I'm at it, I should also challenge the blogosphere's prominent lawyers, such as Jack Balkin, Eugene Volokh, Ann Althouse, Dale Carpenter, Andrew Koppelman, etc (man there are lots of them) to end their silence on this subject and offer their expert opinion. I have posted many comments over the years at their blogs, and never once has one of them replied to me that I was wrong. I think that's interesting.

When I pester them enough, they generally respond that they simply aren't interested in the subject, or haven't thought about it, which is total bullshit: they just don't want the subject to be raised yet, they think they can just ignore me and pretend that they've never been asked if conception rights are the sine qua non of marriage and if the state might have an interest in stopping same-sex conception or genetic engineering before it happens. There are students studying genetics law and reproductive law in law schools today, but lawyers are never disinterested parties. That whole lucrative, interesting field will be gone if Congress enacts the Egg and Sperm Compromise. Just like the "marriage experts" and the "bioethicists", these are people that have a vested interest in extending the controversy indefinitely and bringing us slowly down the slippery slope one expensive case at a time.

Well here is the challenge to the above law profs: explain to me where I am going wrong. Engage in a discussion here with me, tell me about how marriage and conception rights are related or not related, or whatever. Just address the damn subject already.

Warning: Fraudulent "Marriage Defender"

David Benkof of GaysDefendMarriage joins the list of fraudulent "marriage defenders" such as Maggie Gallagher, Jennifer Roback Morse, Family Scholars, Opine Editorials, who have dominated the traditional marriage debate on the blogosphere and provided insipid and embarrassing straw man arguments for the same-sex marriage proponents to argue against.

The thing they all have in common that makes them utterly fraudulent and dangerous is that they all believe that same-sex conception should be legal. In each case, I have been rejected and insulted and censored on their sites for raising the issue of same-sex conception and suggesting they add opposition to unethical conception technology to their arguments. They have surprised me by siding with radical gay activists in insisting that same-sex conception is a right and should not be banned. They do not see that it harms marriage to say that a couple that is allowed to conceive a baby together should not be allowed to marry first. How can they be so inconsistent? The only answer is that they are frauds.

There are also bioethicists who seem to be performing the same function in the bioethics realm (Wesley Smith, the Center for Bioethics and Culture, the Center for Genetics and Society, even perhaps the President's Council on Bioethics), offering up weak, useless arguments against cloning and genetic engineering and refusing to clearly call for a law against creating genetically modified people. When I press them to call for a law, they fall silent. Their livelihood comes from writing about how bad the Brave New World is, not from stopping the Brave New World.

Not surprisingly, all of these marriage defenders and bioethicists blogroll each other and praise each other as the top-notch thinkers offering the best arguments imaginable against same-sex marriage and genetic engineering. Assuming they are all actual different people, they have become a remarkably effective conspiracy to block simple legislation and cover up the issues of same-sex conception and germline modification, as if these weren't even ethical issues.

I challenge all the groups and people name-checked here to clarify their position on creating children using modified or artificial gametes, or any method besides joining the sperm of a man and the egg of a woman. I am still hopeful they will prove me wrong about this conspiracy, by just one of them breaking ranks and supporting a law against same-sex conception and the use of modified gametes.