Mom I Married My Vibrator

In a twist that illustrates just how far we’ve come since the ideas of marriage were invented thousands of years ago, a Japanese man has married a character in a video game. He took “her” to Guam on a honeymoon.

The man, who prefers his online moniker SAL9000, met his love playing the dating simulation game “Love Plus.”

What I love about this story is that it shows us that marriage is a symbolic act – not a biological one. That’s why gay marriage is such a volatile issue; They are both symbolic of love transcending the ancient cultural expectation – the myth of marriage.

“If more people were to find ways of expressing themselves like this, I think it would make society a bit more interesting,” SAL9000 told Reuters Television.

We take the idea of marriage very seriously, but it obscures the fact that this young man has fallen in love with an idea – a symbol – of a made up reality, that clearly exists only in a game.

Would we feel the same way if he was marrying a made up boy character? Would the news have even picked the story up?

Alternative marriage is really about the legality of the myth that love conquers all versus the myth of god sanctioned hetero sexual marriage. Both strike at powerful emotions in our human psyche.

In retrospect, we will see that gay marriage advocates were at the forefront of the fight for freedom to love and marry freely and have that be love be sanctioned and protected by the law.

In my opinion, love will transcend tradition eventually. It always has, and it always will. That’s what makes the love story so compelling; against all odds, love manages to pull through.

This story was very reassuring to my friend Jane who said she would jump at the chance to legally marry her vibrator. Perhaps eventually, they will even come prepackaged with an engagement ring.