In our galaxy, there is a place known as Brool-Yi, sometimes spelled Broolyi, also called The Isle of Peace.
There, they have automated priests and ministers made of wax, ala Madame Tussaud, who whir out of church portals built somewhat like cuckoo clocks.
These reverend-puppets perform all sanctioned services for the masses, including sanctioned marriage.
This came about in Broolyi, in part, because multiple interpretations and exegeses of church law and writings by various priests and ministers caused disagreement amongst the ranks of clergy and church hierarchies….so the Broolyians decided to do away with heroic human thought and feeling, and automate religion instead.
Thus, in Broolyi, Isle of Peace, all the churches, temples and other places of Godness, are run by humanoid machines dressed in vestments… all manufactured at an authorized ‘automated religion factory.’
Meanwhile, on planet Earth, one wonders, are some who are concerned with these matters of clerical uniformity of thought, considering the same?… importing from the ‘automated religion factory,’ standardized wax clerics who will only follow the diagrams soldered into their copper and wire innards….
PoliSci(Fi) Girl cannot claim to understand all these matters, perhaps because she’s just passed the van Allen Belt, but perhaps more so, from lack of large enough mind to comprehend all the complex customs of earth beings… yet, just as one small mind whirling through the galaxy, I wonder as I wander…
Wouldn’t such services, such as marriages by rote, not dehumanize all and any who marry under such automated rather than living, ever expanding philosophy?
Wouldn’t it be more Imitatio Cristi, for instance, to base the blessing of marriage on the inclusions of the earthlings’ God of Love, rather than on the minds of mere men? Or lack of minds in automatons?
Just asking.
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CODA
1. The Broolyians are written about by Sweven Godfrey in 1901 after one of the obviously clearest circumnavigations of odd outposts in our galaxy. His story was entitled Riallaro, The Archipelago of Exiles.
2. See too, this article today at TMV by Joe Windish: Urgent Call: Prop 8 in CA; Marriage Myths and Historical Facts
3. My views on Prop 8 in Calif, were shaped by being an activist on resisting Amendment 2 here in the Rockies, which passed and was declared finally, unconstitutional. Amendment 2 was also sponsored by a religious group. It attempted to exclude GLBT people from equal rights under the law.
If you’d like to know more about how I was involved with helping to fight Amendment 2 in the 1990s, (along with thousands of other good souls) you can go here and read the story… “Not a witch hunt — a treasure hunt: GLTB persons”
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