The Raelians are in the news again. This time it’s because the alien-worshipping tribe is selling their $2.95 million compound in the Eastern Townships. Apparently their expansion plans include the U.S., so they’re packing up and leaving behind a prime piece of property, including a spaceship-shaped condo complex, and a replica of the UFO that Rael says he encountered while hiking along a volcano in France in the 1970s.
They were last in the news in 2002, after claiming to have cloned a baby, which never actually materialized. I remember attending the gay pride parade in Montreal in the mid-90s, and the Raelians put on quite a show, trying to attract us queers to their compound. Their float included a 6-foot naked woman mounted on a cross. And I remember one of their recruiters trying to convince me that human cloning was a viable option for gays who want to be parents.
Now, they are following in the footsteps of the celebrities who have been setting up vanity charities in Africa based on fringe/trendy religions. But instead of adopting African children, they have chosen to sponsor a specific body part, with the launch of their new Clitoraid campaign, which aims to build a “pleasure hospital” in Burkina Faso to perform genital reconstruction on women who have been circumcised.

Now, those sponsor-a-child programs are bad enough with their saccharine portrayals of bloated children — but this is too much to take. I mean, really, would you want this guy to have anything to do with your tender parts? It’s so ICKY. White man (with strange top knot on his head) has arrived, and he will restore sexual pleasure … I wonder, will they perform surgeries in their spaceship?