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It is impossible to imagine what Dr. Dobson and the entire Focus on the Family … uhh, family will have to say about this. First, there was all this business about the sanctity of marriage being assaulted by women wanting to hitch up with women and men with men. Hard on the heels of all that was the long term, meaningful relationship between a man in South Carolina and his favorite concubine horse. Certainly, all that was a load for the good doctor to process without even having to focus on what Lot was doing with his daughters way back in the day.

Now comes this.

Now, we have arrived at man marrying an avatar. I’ll bet this couldn’t happen in Dr. Dobson’s church. As it happened in Japan, it may not have been a Christian ceremony though, from all reports, a priest of some sort did officiate. Must have been an Animist priest. Who else would officiate at the wedding between a human and an animation?

The ceremony uniting Sal9000, human male, to Nene Anegasaki, avatar, was announced as any such event between humans would be. It was well attended by the friends and family of both bride and groom. Video highlights of the couple’s earlier activities together, their courtship, were presented. Friends of the groom gave speeches as did friends of the bride. Best wishes were extended and accepted, as is customary. Finally, the priest invoked the blessings and solemnities of the supernatural, in one or another of His forms, upon the union and the deal was sealed.

After the party celebrating the union concluded, the happy couple retired to the privacy of their nuptial chamber and, as any fan of Japanese anime well knows is possible, consummated the wedding. OK, the consummation was conducted through a highly technical form of phone/video sex, but, as Ken Starr tells us, “Sex is sex, Mr. President.”

The entire affair, other than the actual consummation, was recorded and shown live, and in endless repetition, on the Japanese equivalent of You Tube, Nico Nouga Nouga, and, indeed, on You Tube itself. Lots of commentary was posted to the site. As you might imagine, there were those who felt the joy and congratulated the happy couple. There were those who were offended by the entire mess. According to the report of the event on Boing Boing, there were even those who took the ceremony as a sign that Japan had come to its end. Likewise, there were those who assumed it was simply a good joke. Maybe, even a satirical commentary on something or other.

Whatever else it may be, it was certainly a first. First, in real life that is. The movie, Avatar, contemplates some pretty racy relations between humans and avatars. Not just the slaughter of one by the other, but down and dirty blending, both scientifically and sexually, the flesh of one with the other.

Dr. Dobson and his ilk had best get a handle on this trend early on. Dobson better consider focusing on this family before it is too late. If he and the other definers of and watch dogs of decent human behavior aren’t careful, this wedding could be the tentative, first steps in furthering that process the watch dogs don’t believe in and say never happened, human evolution. If they aren’t careful all these various technical trends, IBM simulating the human brain via the intermediary step of cat thought, rapid advances in replicating the movement of various body parts by prosthetics, gay marriage, stem cell research, Darwin’s theories, cloud computing, the world library, electric cars, suburban Connecticut women and who knows what all else, could be leading to a new form of bio/mechanical/digital hominoid. This could be the biggest thing since Lucy, if Lucy ever really existed.

Has anyone stopped to think, like that Justice of the Peace down in Louisiana, what the children of Sal9000 and Nene will look like? My goodness, what kinds of discrimination and such will those poor offspring face, half-human half-animation? How these poor beings will suffer for the inability of their parents to refrain from participating in the march of evolution.

I say we turn to the wisdom of the elders. In doing so we need look no further than the sainted sage, Barney Fife. This situation, if ever one did, calls for some serious and immediate “bud nipping.”

1. Tom Baxter says:

   November 26, 2009 at 9:09 am

   Readers of William Gibson will recognize this marriage as a story that was predicted in – and no doubt inspired by – his novel “Idoru.”

   Reply