Uh-oh.  Move over Mary Cheney.

LONDON, England (Reuters) — Flora, a pregnant Komodo dragon living in a British zoo, is expecting eight babies in what scientists said on Wednesday could be a Christmas virgin birth.

Flora has never mated, or even mixed, with a male dragon, and fertilized all the eggs herself, a process culminating in parthenogenesis, or virgin birth. Other lizards do this, but scientists only recently found that Komodo dragons do too.

"Nobody in their wildest dreams expected this. But you have a female dragon on her own. She produces a clutch of eggs and those eggs turn out to be fertile. It is nature finding a way," Kevin Buley of Chester Zoo in England said in an interview.

He said the incubating eggs could hatch around Christmas.

Kudos on the timing of that, Flora.  It'll make the Wingnut crowd have kittens.  Ordinary, heterosexually fertilized, pro-life kittens, of course, but yes, kittens.

As you can see in the clip above, this has already started making waves in the Conservative Christianist community.  On December 6th, Anderson Cooper hosted sex columnist Dan Savage and Janice Crouse from the Beverly LeHay Institute, the "Think" Tank for the Concerned Women for America to discuss Flora's decision to inseminate herself and the possible ramifications for her children.

Anderson Cooper: Janice, let me start with you. You described this pregnancy as wrong and even unconscionable. Why? 

Janice Crouse: Well, it's not really about Flora the Komodo Dragon. It's about the baby dragons that are going to be born without a father. We have in this country right now a real tragedy that one third and more of our children are being born without a father in the family.

This has ramifications that are disastrous for those dragons. You know, so many people talk about doing this, that or the other for the children of this country. Well, the best thing you can do for a child today is to marry the father and have a family.

COOPER: But isn't this…

CROUSE: That would be the best arrangement for that child to grow up with, the best environment.

Dan Savage counters:

DAN SAVAGE, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: The studies that she's citing, many of which have been debunked show that the best case, the best thing for a child, is to have two lizards in the home. A lot of the studies have shown the negative impact of there being a single dragon family are children who have experienced divorce where usually the father who's gone. So the studies measure the impact of the missing lizard, which is typically in our culture the father.

But what we're really measuring in the studies is the impact of having just one parent. All the studies of gay and lesbian families, families headed by gay and lesbian couples, have shown that dragons are just as healthy, just as well cared for, just as likely to identify as heterosexuals, or lesbian and gay, when they grow up.

And just the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association, the American Academy of Child-Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, all these groups and more, who are primarily concerned with the welfare of dragons, have signed off and approved of and endorsed the rights of gay and lesbian couples to start their own families.

We heart Dan Savage.

Crouse, for her part, responds in the typical fashion of Wingnuts when confronted with evidence that disproves their emotional convictions, "That's not true!  You made it up!  God told me that parthenogenetic reproduction is WRONG and that Komodo dragon is going to Lizard Hell, y'hear me?  HELL!!"

CROUSE: The research says very differently. You know, you look at the — any other household arrangement, you're going to find those little lizards are very vulnerable to all sorts of negative outcomes. They're going to drop out of school more. They're going to get into drugs more. They're going to start drinking earlier. All those things…

SAVAGE: With all due respect, that's simply not true. That's simply not true, with all due respect.

CROUSE: I'm sorry, but the research shows differently.

SAVAGE: Those studies have been debunked. You can go on Google and debunk everything she's saying in five seconds. 

(snip)

SAVAGE: Does she propose to take those eggs away from Flora the Komodo Dragon and her partner Judy and maybe give them to Britney Spears or Andrea Yates? Heterosexual parents are not the magic ticket to a stable home life and a stable home environment for a baby dragon. There's so much evidence out there that that's just not the case.

Flora herself was not available for comment, but issued a terse statement through her spokeslizard, "Judy and I are very excited about the arrival of our children.  However, we ask that you respect our privacy and the privacy of our family at this time.  Thank you."

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