Bill Johnson's sperm (artist's conception)
This is completely off-topic, but, yes, that headline is true. Legitimate news sources that are not The Onion are reporting that former Alabama gubernatorial candidate Bill Johnson, a right-wing republican with an anti-gay fetish, is now facing a scandal of sorts for donating sperm to lesbian Kiwis. Yep, a man who ran on an anti-gay-marriage platform is helping lesbian couples who want to have children.
Seems that Johnson (and his johnson) have been in New Zealand working on earthquake relief — and secretly helping out women who want to get pregnant with his sperm, and financial donations. As the New Zealand Herald reports, Johnson has been on the internets
using the online persona “chchbill” to meet women who want help to get pregnant.
Under that persona, he has discussed making donations to at least nine women without the knowledge of his family in the US.
Three of the women are now pregnant, and Johnson has assisted another three with donations in the past month. It is believed he has been in communication with at least another three women to discuss sperm donation.
So why is the conservative pol being so, well, liberal with his sperm? Because he wants the world to have more Bill Johnsons in it, and in this particular task his wife cannot help. You see, as he explained to a NZ Herald reporter,
I am married to the most beautiful woman in the world. When I married her I knew we couldn’t have any more children. She had a hysterectomy 10 years ago. … If life’s circumstances had dealt me a different hand I wouldn’t be doing this. It is not the hand that life has dealt my wife.
Reproduction and having children is as basic a human need as eating.
Apparently his wife does not fully agree with this assessment, nor was she aware what he was doing with his evenings off in New Zealand. The Herald again:
Johnson, who has a degree in chemistry and is a member of the international high-IQ club Mensa, said he had told his wife he wanted to act as a sperm donor. The couple had sought counselling shortly after. He said he left believing she was aware he was going to continue.
Asked if his wife knew he was donating sperm, he said: “She does now.”
As do we. She’s not happy about any of it. The ironies abound.
More on the story at the Huffington Post.
Alternate headline:
“Conservative politician donates sperm to lesbians, still manages to remain a jackass”
That sums it up perfectly.
It really is. At first I thought it was sort of sweet that he was able to get over his prejudice to help those woman rather then this being another one of those sad “horrible bigot is actually just self-hating” stories.
Then I read he was doing it just so there’s be a lot of mini-hims around 😐
So much for “I have a high IQ.”
And against his wife’s express wishes. Way to snatch douchebaggery from the jaws of decency!
Welp, bigot exercises his reproductive rights, I guess? It’s his sperm, he can decide what to do with it as long as all the adults are consenting, same as my eggs and my uterus are my business. Hypocrisy should be duly mocked, though.
There’s so much wrong in this story I don’t know where to start.
The fact the guy did this not to help the women but to boost his own ego
He doesn’t seem to see the babies his donations will produce as actual independent human beings just extensions of himself (a delusion I see in far too many people who shouldn’t be parents)
His wife seems to think she owns his sperm which is a bit disturbing, it’s not like he actually had sex with the women or will be financially responsible for the resulting children
The only bright spot is the women who I’m sure are thrilled to be pregnant and I hope their anonymity is protected. Thankfully being an asshole is a learned trait and not genetic.
@Noadi, thinking she owns his sperm is a bit different than being upset that your spouse is literally making babies with others. Monogamous couples generally have a mutual understanding that this event will not be happening.
@ DSC- Plus, they talked about it in counseling. Looks like he sort of let her walk away thinking he wouldn’t do it, without explicitly promising not to.
Also- way to use gay people as a vehicle for your own self-importance. Cripes.
Not you, DSC, the guy in the OP. I am bad at clarity.
This is the weirdest damn scandal I’ve seen in a while. His motivation for donating is somewhere between hilarious and horrifying (“I must spread my precious DNA!”)
The guy want to create his own Lebensborn But he’s an idiot if think that kids raised by lesbian couples will be bigoted like him. In the 1980s, I’ve read an article that a guy born because of the Lebensborn program had become a Communist gay.
@Noadi The Herald has pledged to keep the identities of the women secret: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10772400
Fortunately the Christchurch earthquake didn’t destroy all the specimen cups in town. Of course, as a Mensaian, he could probably find an alternate receptacle…without, you know, actually dealing with people as people.
What is this I don’t even…
That’s even better that the old and usual “homophobic politicians caught having sex with a man in public bathroom”, no they create homo-parental family? The laugh never ends.
Oh no, look at all of these feminist marriages he’s perpetuating! It’s just like the holocaust!!!
@Noadi, thinking she owns his sperm is a bit different than being upset that your spouse is literally making babies with others. Monogamous couples generally have a mutual understanding that this event will not be happening.
I don’t think that applies if sex isn’t actually involved, as is the case with donating sperm…
According to the NZ Herald article, Bill Johnson had specifically promised to his wife that he wouldn’t be a sperm donor anymore. He broke that promise and betrayed her trust. It would be the same if a couple mutually agreed that a wife would not be a surrogate for other people, but then she goes ahead and does it anyway. It’s more of a dishonesty issue than anything, in my opinion.
I get why the wife is so upset. She’s unable to have more children, and so he’s going to other women to fulfill something she probably sees as her duty. She probably feels inadequate. Plus she thought he had promised not to.
Breaking a promise to your spouse is wrong, regardless of the content of the promise. It doesn’t matter whether he promised not to fuck another woman or not to donate sperm to her or not to go out with her to Sunday breakfast, he shouldn’t do it if he promised not to.
Just my opinion of course, but it seems to me that donating sperm is something that one should discuss with one’s spouse, since there might be the chance that the resulting kids might track down their genetic father, which is something that could affect the whole family.
It also occurs to me that it’s a little strange to completely deny your spouse something that they desperately yearn for without a really good reason, but who knows. Maybe she has one.
And the anti-feminists will ignore that the feminists are saying that keeping a promise to a partner is important.
He’s a douchebag. I’d love to see him find out, later in time, that the kids are nothing like him (i.e. decent human beings, tolerant and broad-minded)
@darksidecat
“Noadi, thinking she owns his sperm is a bit different than being upset that your spouse is literally making babies with others. Monogamous couples generally have a mutual understanding that this event will not be happening.”
Says the gender who gets pregnant with another mans child at a rate of 10 to 20% in supposed monogamous relationships while decieving the false father into believing the child is his.
—————-
@entrophia
“Welp, bigot exercises his reproductive rights, I guess?”
You can’t be a feminist and not be a bigot. You’re wedded to an ideology and intolerant of any contrary facts. That is a bigot.
—————
@Pecunium
” He’s a douchebag. I’d love to see him find out, later in time, that the kids are nothing like him (i.e. decent human beings, tolerant and broad-minded)”
You can’t be a decent human being as a feminist. Feminism is a hate movement, only women matter.
You can’t be tolerant. Feminism tolerates only women centric views. This site is dedicated to intolerance.
You can’t be broad-minded. Feminism is ideology, no broad-mindedness can exist within an ideology that accepts only women centric policy. This site is dedicated to close-mindedness.
Genderqueers, you mean? That’s odd, most genderqueer people I know have no children and those that do generally have them with women…
I also don’t see how this is not a genderneutral issue. People with ovaries donating eggs without telling their monogamous partners is a douche move as well. Granted, egg donation is less common because of the far more invasive nature of the procedures, but there are still people who totally do it.
This “feminism is a hate movement” and “feminists hate men” thing is getting way old. Surely that kind of thing went out of fashion in the 1980s?
Women cheat! Therefore….(hand waving).
Are the women cheating with other women, NWO? Not if they get pregnant by someone else. So these other guys who are sleeping around with married women (some of whom are married themselves). They are completely innocent, apparently. Since you don’t even mention them.
Oh, blitzgal — these are of course the elusive “Alpha men”. They are all any woman (regardless of sexuality) really want and they are assholes (all women want assholes, remember?) and NWO hates them too.
/sarcasm
NWOSlave:
It’s perfectly possible to be a feminist and not be a bigot. None of the regular non-MRA posters here come across as bigots. On the other hand, I can’t in all honesty say the same about you.
Of course you can. Indeed, I’d expect a core requirement of being a decent human being is to sympathise with the proposal that everyone should be treated equal regardless of gender, which is what feminism ultimately means.
Drivel. And demonstrable drivel at that. I doubt you could find a single post from a regular commenter here that unambiguously expresses hatred towards men in general, but I can find dozens expressing absolute loathing of women, and on all sorts of levels from their bodies (urgh, icky!) to their alleged inability to perform particular tasks to… well, just being women generally.
Again, absolute drivel. Mocking people for expressing intolerant and bigoted views only equates to intolerance of those views, for reasons that are amply evidence-based. And the vast majority of threads include an immensely affectionate description of a commenter’s partner – I’ve read loads over the last few weeks. Indeed, people are even trying to get you to lighten up and talk about the things you enjoy – how on earth is that “dedicated to intolerance”?
And now you’re just repeating yourself, presumably in the belief that Lewis Carroll’s rule about saying something three times makes it true. It doesn’t.
Is it worth mentioning them? I mean, if they don’t know the man in question and know it would hurt him, is it morally wrong for the man in that scenario to have no-strings-attached sex? He breaks no promise and really has no obligation to find out the dos and don’ts of his sex partner’s relationship.
Obviously the same would be true the other way around.
I personally would probably not want to have sex with someone who does go behind the back of his or her partner, but I’m not really sure if I should feel guilty if I did.
My wife was “the other woman” in a situation where someone was cheating on his wife without her knowledge.
She also seems to have a pretty clear conscience, and I can see why – she wasn’t aware that he was married at first, and even after she found out she initially believed him when he assured her that he was on the point of asking for a divorce. Also, crucially, there weren’t any kids involved.
“Says the gender who gets pregnant with another mans child at a rate of 10 to 20% in supposed monogamous relationships while decieving the false father into believing the child is his.”
NWO, I’m sorry to break it to you, but soap operas are not real life!
” Feminism is a hate movement, only women matter.”
We don’t hate men. Stop saying stupid shit and just be happy.
Count-down to “proof” from NWO in the form of some stuff that Sharon Osborne once said on the telly or similar.
Rinse, repeat.
This is what can happen when your sexuality gets mixed up with reproduction.
Apparently, this man had the internalized idea that his sexual drive was linked with the ‘need’ to spread his genetic inheritance. I’ve read about this; it always seemed curious to me, as my own sexuality is completely non-procreative. So the old ‘why am I raising another man’s children? Where are MY children?!’ shtik gives him the motivation to go behind his wife’s back. She and he are raising HER children, but that wasn’t enough for him.
It’s tantamount to emotional infidelity, except he was attracted to the idea of his gametes becoming zygotes instead of an actual other person. I hope my sons don’t turn out that demented.
Owlslave reminds me of the black vans in Japan. They drive by, blasting their Hitler music and waving their imperial flags, and shout crap over the loudspeaker about how the foreigners are ruining Japan, etc. etc. Sometimes they stop in front of stations and whine there. It’s loud as heck, hateful, annoying, but you eventually learn to ignore it and give your best smug “screw you, nationalists” smile. Talking with them is unproductive.
Owly is totally the same, except instead of whining about how the Chinese are destroying the economy, he whines about the Title IX agency of DEATH and the VAWA mercenaries from HELL. And we pretty much tune him out.
Now I’m picturing Owly in his tradie’s ute – instead of B&S stickers on the back window, he has anti-VAWA stickers. Probably still has the “No Fat Chicks” sticker, though.
NWO: You’ve got no claim on “broad-mindedness”. You think you are in a war, and only total anihilation of your opposition (women, and those who think they are human beings of equal standing to men) is acceptable. If they mock you, you think hitting them is ok.
If they hit back, then you feel it’s ok to knife them.
If they have knives, you think you should shoot them.
Only when they have been enslaved will you think women are not to be attacked.
If you think I am going to tolerant of that, you are off your rocker. Anyone can do anything they like, so far as I am concerned, so long as they aren’t impinging on anothers rights (and no, raping women is not a right). When they do that, I’m against them. And, allthings considered, I’m likely to be a lot more willing than you are to actually deal with people who are violent.
But go on, tell us all about how evil women are in charge. Explain to us what they can do. How all they have to do is sit down in the street and call out, “That man raped me,” and the man is arrested and never seen again.
Please explain it all to us.
“Not the hand that life has dealt my wife”?
That was entirely the wrong metaphor to use.
Slavey:
Genders can’t get pregnant.
Is this like the women from VAWA?
Meller: You keep talking about how women are “mutants” if they are good in the mathematical arts.
What are your degrees in?
I’ll never be a journalist because I could not resist titling this article “Politician Is a Jackoff.”
According to the NZ Herald article, Bill Johnson had specifically promised to his wife that he wouldn’t be a sperm donor anymore.
I stand corrected, then.