Kmiec: "Say 'no' to the Brave New World"

Finally! Prominent Constitutional Law professor Douglas Kmeic has written an op-ed for SFGate that raises the issue of same-sex procreation and how it relates to marriage. It doesn't go all the way to the conclusions I'd like it to, but it points in the right direction.

Separating marriage from procreation may also have other remote, but frightening, ill consequences. Society should be skeptical of wider use of asexual procreation. An earlier dark moment in U.S. history employed eugenics to forcibly sterilize the mentally disabled. The push for artificial wombs and the genetic manipulation of intelligence already peppers scientific literature - a push that would no doubt grow, accommodating even the minimal same-sex desire for simulating natural child birth - claimed to be of interest for 20-30 percent of same-sex couples. When carefully assessed, the acquisition of unnatural reproductive means often advances the interests of the very affluent through a libertarian exercise that would threaten all hope of democratic equality.

In a depopulating world, the claim that there is a universal right to marry regardless of gender becomes a frightening ally of a claimed universal right to access to genetically engineered children. People should reject this claim by returning traditional marriage to its rightful place.

The best part is that Professor Kmeic is a close advisor and supporter of Barack Obama, and used to advise Bush I and Reagan on Constitutional law too. So maybe he'll give Barack the right advice and he'll arrive at the right conclusion, and come up with the Egg and Sperm Civil Union Compromise on his own. He needs to advise Obama to start using conception rights as the distinction between civil unions and marriage, and to start actually opposing same-sex marriage in states that already have it, as opposed to having "no problem" with it, and saying that same-sex couples should have all the rights of marriage. He needs to say that same-sex couples in Civil Unions should have all the rights of marriage except the right to conceive children together using their own genes, which should remain the essential right of marriage, and be reserved for a man and a woman.

A vote for Democrats is a vote for Gattaca

Joe Biden gave a talk last week where he revealed the real hopes of Democrats for Embryonic Stem Cell research. Here is his quote:

“I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy, because there's joy to it as well, the joy and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect. Well guess what folks? If you care about it, why don't you support stem cell research?”

Biden received a thunderous ovation when he made the remark at a town hall style meeting this morning in Columbia.

First of all, the Republicans do support stem cell research and always have, they just don't support embryonic stem cell research, which involves creating a new embryo and pulling it apart into disorganized embryonic cells, which destroys its chance to be born. Adult stem cell research (where pluripotent stem cells are created directly from skin cells or marrow cells, and no new embryo is created) has already produced treatments and made great progress, and Republicans support it fully.

So why do Democrats give a thunderous ovation for embryonic stem cell research? Well, there's a big clue when Biden talks about birth defects, and suggests that "if you care about it, why don't you support stem cell research." The insistence on embryonic research can only mean one thing: they ultimately aspire to do genetic intervention to prevent birth defects by designing the embryo's genes.

That there would be "a thunderous ovation" indicates that there is far more being cheered for than stem cell research. There are far too many Transhumanists and people who call for designer babies to think their brand of thinking would not find a comfy home in that crowd of Biden supporters. That applause was for the whole promise of genetic intervention, perfect designer babies, and not having any babies with birth defects in the first place. In the context of "the difficulty of raising a child with a developmental disability" (note his need to carefully remind the crowd that there could be joy in raising an imperfect baby, lest they thunderously boo), it's clear the Democrats are calling for Designer Babies and genetic intervention.

The Republican platform, on the other hand, calls for a ban on Cloning and experimentation on embryos (not sure what their definition of cloning is, hopefully it would be a blanket ban on all conceptions that do not combine sperm of a man and an egg of a woman, like Missouri's ban).

The Democrats call for embryonic and genetic research and reproductive freedom. The Democrats insist on same-sex conception being legal. On BlueMassGroup, they even refuse to condemn Will Saletan's incredible call for genetic intervention to raise IQ's of Nigerian babies. Are they out of their minds?

A vote for Obama and the Democrats is a vote for Gattaca. For government regulated, state funded eugenics and same-sex conception, coercive genetic intervention, and the loss of basic human rights to have a natural child.