Superboy: Offspring to Homosexual Parents, Superman & Lex Luthor:

It’s no joke. Superman and Lex Luthor have had a baby together and his name is Superboy. This is what DC Comics has actually done with the Superboy character.

What a perfect illustration of cutting edge bioethical issues. (And although I am not a big follower of this debate, from what I have read and from my philosophical leanings, I come down more on the side of Ronald Bailey than that of Francis Fukuyama or Leon Kass.) Genetic engineering may do for gay equality what civil rights laws and gay marriage couldn’t even do: truly make homosexual couples the equivalent to heterosexual ones. Even if gays receive full and equal legal rights, marriage and all, nature still has given gays one handicap that the law can’t do anything about—the inability of same sex couples to make a baby together. But science—in its ever-successful ability to enable us to rise above the limitations that nature places on us—may soon allow gays to overcome this natural hurdle. Take a fertilized egg, strip it of its genetic material, insert 50% of the genetic material from one same-sex parent and 50% from the other, and viola, two men or two women can have their own baby together.

And this is very similar to how Lex and Clark have had theirs, Superboy. Before I get to the main point, let me fill you in on some background details. Originally, Superboy and Superman were one and the same. Clark Kent, as a young teen, had become Superboy and then eventually grew up into Superman. Then in the mid-80s DC Comics—through its miniseries “Crisis on Infinite Earths”—had rewritten much of its history. In 1986, following Crisis, Superman had his history revamped by creator John Byrne, and much had changed. Now Superman never was Superboy. Lex Luthor (pre-Crisis) went from being a mad scientist who lost his hair in a lab accident (that he blamed on Superboy) to (post-Crisis) a ruthless businessman (who began shaving his head after suffering from gasp, male pattern baldness), and who now happens to be President of the United States in the DC Universe. And many other interesting changes were made as well.

In the 1990s, DC decided to kill off Superman, but of course, he really didn’t die. But when we thought Supes was dead, a bunch of scientists—part of the Cadmus Project of Star Labs—set out to preserve the Man of Steel’s legacy by cloning him. The cloning was at first unsuccessfully so what the scientists did was take DNA from a human donor and splice 50% of Superman's DNA in with it. And the experiment worked. Superboy was born and was artificially aged from an infant to 15 years old in a matter of days. It has just been revealed in the Teen Titans series that the human donor was none other than Lex Luthor. So Superboy’s DNA is derived 50% from Superman's, 50% from Lex Luthor's.

With his fathers being archenemies, all I can say is talk about a dysfunctional family!