SEX, BOMBS & BURGERS

When I started this whole book project, I never thought I'd find myself referring to the Raelians, but here I am doing it - and not for the first time! Daniel Howe, a colleague on Twitter, pointed me to this press release from the Raelians this week that advocates supplying Catholic priests with sex robots, to steer them away from paedophilia. Wow.

Okay, first up - the Raelians are a UFO cult that believe in humanity having had previous contact with aliens. Their leader, Rael a.k.a. Claude Vorilhon, is a French-born former journalist and race car driver who is (mostly) based in Montreal. The Raelians are involved in a number of far-out causes, including the cloning of humans through the controversial company Clonaid, which they see as a step toward achieving immortality.

When last we left the Raelians, they were getting donations from a porn magnate in New Zealand for another of their pet causes - Clitoraid, an organization set up to help people deal with genital mutilation.

Now, they're looking to raise money to build sex robots for Catholic priests who, like Nova Scotia bishop Raymond Lahey, just can't seem to stay away from child porn and paedophilia. The problem, the Raelians say, is that priests are denied natural sexual gratification - something that robots could safely satisfy:

Our governments should spend less time questioning themselves about the existence of religious minorities, and instead draw the obvious conclusions given the innumerable crimes committed by a religion that has lost all contact with the initial teachings of its prophet Jesus. In the meantime, while we wait for the international authorities to focus on the Roman Catholic doctrine and closely examine it against Human Rights, as we have been asking for a long time, a few well distributed robots should give a break to the children in our neighbourhoods.

We've talked about sex robots quite a bit here, and the topic is covered fairly extensively in my upcoming book. The long and the short of it is, sex with robots is a question of when, not if... and some would say it's even somewhat possible today. While a normal, right-thinking person might be inclined to think that sex with a robot is sad or pathetic, the Raelians do actually have a point in that there are actually many reasons for why it could be a good thing. Sex robots - especially once they get really life-like - could fulfill the natural gratification needs of people who simply can't get it from real people. That covers people who are socially, physically or morally incapable.

As for the Raelians... you have to hand it to them. They may pick some really bizarre causes to support, but at least they seem to have their hearts in the right place.

In the meantime, what would Jesus say about having sex with robots?

[Image is copyright Corbis]