Dear Carolynn

Clones, Birth Certificates, and the Fog of Identity

Author: Mark Bolton. Co-written: DeepSeek. Images: CHATGPT

Dear Carolyn, this morning at around 3am, I got thinking about something that stemmed from a video I watched last night about Birth Certificates. The first question I asked myself was what if you were born but no one stamped the paperwork? That is, no Birth Certificate. What are the pros and cons? The implications to not only the new born, but to society as a whole? An hour later my thought experiments moved forward to random thoughts; Ted Bundy clones, the Bible in courtrooms, and the danger of the Mike Huckabee's of the world. Just to name a few.

This is where I landed.

On Being Unstamped (no Birth Certificate).

Let’s start where we start. A person is born. That person takes a breathe, starts to cry, and grows. But no birth certificate? No “stamp?” In the eyes of the state, therefore, that person doesn’t exist? Or does exist? Or doesn’t and does?

So, what is their status?

The instinct is to say they’re invisible. No Medicare, no school, no passport, no rights. And that’s true—for accessing the system anyway, they’re ghosts. But, they’re not invisible to obligations and obeying the law, therefore they officially exist—they’re just not ratified.

If they work, they owe tax. If they kill, they can be charged. The law judges you through your actions, not your paperwork. You can’t opt out by simply never being stamped. The moment you do something—school, earn, hurt, love, build—you step into the light. The system may not know your name, but it knows your body, your face, your fingerprints.

So the unstamped person exists in a strange limbo: fully accountable, but not helped. Subject to the law, but not served by it. Contribute to the welfare state, but not entitled to welfare. A person for punishment, but not for protection.

On Clones and Manufacturing Stamps

What if the tech billionaires get their way—and they usually do—and we start manufacturing people? Clones. Copies. Twenty Ted Bundys walking around, and only one of them is a killer.

How will the state legally recognise them? A “Manufacturing Certificate?” That’s a plate. A thing with a patent number instead of a mother and father. That’s an invention, not a creation. Something that can be owned, traded, maybe recalled. That’s property.

But a clone, if brought to term, breathes. Cries. Grows. Eventually, maybe, kills. It works. It dies. At what point in the lifecycle does a “manufactured unit” become a person?

The law has a word for things that breathe and move and act—person. Not because of how they were conceived, but because of what they are. A clone would have DNA—so do you. A clone would have a body, a mind, a will. Those things, not a piece of paper, are what the law ultimately recognises.

There can be only one choice. A clone gets a birth certificate, not a lot number. It might say “Born Male (cloned)” or “Born Female (cloned)“—a factual notation, not a judgment.

On the Twenty Bundys

But what about the killer? One Bundy, nineteen innocent copies. The police know it’s a Bundy. They just don’t know which Bundy. DNA is useless—it’s identical. Fingerprints might help, but if the killer wore gloves, there’s nothing.

You can’t charge them all with murder. That violates the most basic principle of law—individual guilt. The innocent ones have a rock-solid defence. “It wasn’t me, and you can’t prove it was.“

The Crown or Prosecution might try conspiracy—arguing they all protected the killer by staying silent. But that requires proving each one knew and agreed.

So the killer walks. Not because he’s clever, but because he’s indistinguishable. The law’s commitment to individual proof—its greatest strength—becomes, in this nightmare, its limitation.

Unless, of course, someone turns a corner, catches him red-handed and holds him. Then the spell breaks. He becomes an individual. The fog clears.

On Jack the Ripper

Which brings us to Jack. He was never caught. Not because he was a genius, but because he was never seen. He committed his acts in the dark, and the dark swallowed him.

The whole conversation kept circling back to this; the law is blind until someone turns on a light.

• No birth certificate? Invisible—until you commit an act.
• Twenty clones? Indistinguishable—until one is caught in the act.
• Jack the Ripper? A ghost—until a witness turns a corner.

The act is everything. The document is just a tool for tracking you.

On the Bible in the Courtroom

If the stamp of identity is just a tool, what about the other stamps? The Bible in the courtroom. The oath. The “Almighty God” in the Evidence Act.

Mike Huckabee, as U.S. Ambassador to Israel, gave an interview to Tucker Carlson. He talked about biblical promises—”from the Nile to the Euphrates“—as if they were policy documents. Arab nations condemned it. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia—all pointed out that when one nation’s policy is rooted in another nation’s scripture, the people living on that land cease to be citizens with rights and become obstacles to prophecy .

This is the danger. The separation of church and state isn’t about hostility to religion. It’s about protection—of both. The state doesn’t have to answer for divine mysteries; it just has to run a functional legal system. The church doesn’t have to answer for state violence; it just has to tend to souls.

Australia offers a choice: swear on a Bible, or make an affirmation. I’ve done it myself and chose Affirmation. It’s a compromise. But the question lingers—why is the religious option there at all? That’s not separation of church and state. Huckabee is acting as a church and two states. One is dangerous enough.

On “Born As”

If we have to have one, then the birth certificate shouldn’t pretend to know who you’ll become. It should just record what was true then. Not “Male” or “Female” as eternal verdicts, but “Born Male,” “Born Female,” “Born Cloned.” And, IF desired, the Birth Certificate can record “Born CofE,” “Born Catholic,” “Born Jehovah’s Witness.” etc. Current information, not prophecy. The Death Certificate could read differently in one, two or all of these areas.

It’s such a simple fix. It resolves the trans panic—because the document isn’t lying, it’s just recording. It resolves the clone panic—because the method of conception becomes a factual notation, not a judgment. It resolves the church-state tension—because the state stops pretending to speak eternal truths and just speaks data.

The birth certificate becomes the first chapter, not the whole book.

On What I Learned (Before Going Back To Sleep)

The unstamped person taught us that existence precedes documentation. The clones taught us that identity is more than biology. Jack the Ripper taught us that the act is everything. Huckabee taught us how dangerous, and dreadful a precedent when church and state blur. And “Born As” taught us that the law can adapt—if it chooses to.

The system was built for static beings, and we are not static beings. We change. We wander. We reveal ourselves over time. The law can either fight that—declare certain chapters heretical, certain identities invalid—or it can learn to be a living library.

The clone will come. The trans person is already here—has been here for centuries. Jack the Ripper is still out there in the fog. The Bible is still on the witness stand and in the hands of some very dangerous people.

And the birth certificate—that little piece of paper, that first stamp—sits at the center of all of it. Not because it creates us, but because it’s the first thing the system writes about us. The question is whether we should allow the system to write the rest, and make us live up to what was decided without our consent.

Because Genesis, pardon the pun, is just the beginning and not the Book of Revelation.