Like Fox Mulder, Raelians want to believe San Francisco Chronicle Publication date: 2001-08-19 First of all, we'd like to thank Brigitte Boisselier, a member of the Raelian religion and director of Clonaid. Earlier this month, she single-handedly restored public confidence in the spiritual beliefs of those members of our society who happen to believe that God is a little green man who visited Planet Earth on a flying saucer.

Boisselier, you may recall, was the rail-thin Raelian who testified in Washington before the National Academy of Sciences, speaking in favor of human cloning. Her appearance could not have come at a better time. These four or five years around the turn of the millennium have been tough times for the UFO cult community.

Public confidence in extraterrestrial spirituality fell sharply in 1997, when the bodies of 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult were found in a sprawling mansion in the Southern California suburb of Rancho Santa Fe. They had dressed themselves in black pants and matching Nike shoes, downed a deadly mixture of vodka and drug-laced applesauce, and were prepared to meet a spacecraft hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet, waiting to take them to heaven.

One year later, God's Salvation Church, a small Taiwanese sect that mixed doomsday warnings and UFO lore, appeared in Garland, Texas -- apparently because they thought it sounded like "God's Land." They dressed in white jogging suits and white cowboy hats and expected the saucers to rescue them in Gary, Ind., on the shores of Lake Michigan. That was supposed to happen in 1999, as Asia was devastated by nuclear war.

Now, we are not saying that all UFO cults are alike. Brigitte Boisselier did not wear a white jogging suit and white cowboy hat when she testified before the National Academy of Sciences.

And we are not saying the Raelian church is "another Heaven's Gate." In fact, its teachings specifically condemn suicide -- both individual and mass.

Its teachings on sexual morality are also much different than those espoused by Heaven's Gate.

Male followers of Marshall Herff Applewhite, the puritanical Heaven's Gate leader, were so devoted that they actually allowed themselves to be castrated in a collective submission to their leader's will.

Contrast that with the official teachings of the Raelian religion:

Consenting adult Raelians are encourage to joyously engage in homosexual activity, transsexual relationships and heterosexual communion between two, three or more partners.

Each year, members of the sect gather for a six-day "seminar of awakening"

at a campground in the south of France, where they fast, practice nudity and "awaken their sensuality through appropriated meditation exercises."

But to understand Raelian sexual practices, and their "just do it" attitude toward human cloning, we must first look at the roots of the Raelian religion.

It was founded in 1973 by Claude Vorilhon, a former French race car driver and sports journalist. Vorilhon, now know as "Rael," or "The Messenger,"

received his divine revelation after he was taken into a flying saucer.

His life changed forever when a 4-foot-tall alien "with a slightly greenish tinge" told him that humans had been created by superior beings through genetic engineering and advanced cloning techniques.

Vorilhon also says six "voluptuous and bewitching" female robots sensuously ministered him into the alien spacecraft.

Our attempts to obtain an interview with the Prophet Rael or . Boisselier were unsuccessful, but The Messenger did speak late last year to Margaret Talbot, a writer for the New York Times Sunday Magazine. She visited him at his UFO museum and world headquarters about an hour outside of Montreal, in rural Quebec.

After being shown the life-sized replica of the silver UFO that transported Vorilhon to sensual nirvana, Talbot was led into Rael's sealed chamber. She describes a scene that looks like what would happen if the TV signals from the "X-Files" were somehow mixed with those carrying the Playboy Channel.

Dominating the white room was a large white bed with a tiger print tossed on it. Rael's walls were covered with bare-breasted photos of his companion, Sophie, a beautiful young redhead, who is shown nibbling on a rose and engaged in other photogenic activities. Rael was adorned with his samurai-style topknot, white pants and tunic, with a gold medallion hanging from his neck.

Rael and Boisselier say they have been hired by a rich American couple who wants to clone their 10-month-old baby boy, who died last year during a hospital operation. An altruistic gesture? Not exactly. We don't really understand Claude Vorilhon and the Raelians until we get to the last line of Talbot's story.

"These people we are helping, they want this child," says The Messenger.

"They are willing to pay millions of dollars."

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