A seminal Johnny Appleseed and the business of vice
On Monday, August 28th, the Wall Street Journal offered a front page feature on “A Sperm Donor’s Quest to See Kids: Man chases a role in the lives of the 96 children he fathered.” The article reads like an outrageous satire of a sexually dysfunctional society, but there is not a trace of irony in it, which makes it all the more bizarre. It is also an unintended morality tale of the consequences of the commercialization of vice.
This is a hard article to write because some of the material is obscene. Consider this a trigger-warning. On the other hand, the story draws upon some of the finest instincts and sentiments of the human heart for motherhood and fatherhood. It shows what happens when those are displaced, moved so far out of the natural moral order as to make them unrecognizable. This is part of what happens when people use their human powers for purposes outside of the ends that those powers are meant to serve. Confusion reigns, even over who the father and the mother might be. And behind it all is missing what was long regarded as a fundamental truth–that children are a gift. One cannot demand that they be given. Of course, one’s heart naturally goes out to a married heterosexual couple that cannot conceive, but what of those homosexual couples who won’t because they are unwilling to engage in the heterosexual act that makes conception possible?
This story is largely about them and what is done to facilitate their refusal by employing extraordinary means to give them the gift they nevertheless demand.
This couldn’t happen without modern Johnny Appleseeds of a seminal variety like Dylan Stone-Miller. As a college student, the Journal tells us, he supplemented his income with sperm “donations” for which he made $100 each. “Donation” is an odd choice of words for this practice, as donations are usually freely given. Otherwise, church donors would be taking money from the basket instead of putting it in. In any case, Dylan kept up his “donations” for six years. Now he’s curious about the consequences, of which they’re known to be 96. However, he admits, “I will never know for sure how many children I have,” which seems a bit heedless.
It is never the case that only one thing goes morally wrong. All sorts of supportive wrongs come to its aid. As we shall see here, there is an unbroken chain of moral malfeasance. Let’s start with masturbating into a dish. According to the Stanford University website, “the donation process is simple. The man walks into a private room which is usually stocked with pornography and masturbates into a sterile container.”
