Swastika-Touting UFO Cult Plans Topless Protest

Not just a bid for attention? We'd never have guessed from the boobs and the baby-cloning and the swastikas

We'd give this a hearty "only in Miami," but that doesn't cover the interplanetary bent -- and universally recognized looniness -- of a group who plans to doff their tops on Lincoln Road on Sunday.

Members of the UFO religion International Raëlian Movement say they will protest Sunday at 4 p.m. against what they call sexist laws that prevent women from going topless as men do.

They plan to get their point across with pasties, men in red bras, and signs bearing a swastika inside a Star of David, the international symbol of the Raëlians.

That's usually trouble enough -- protests greeted the group at a 1992 gathering at the Eden Roc -- but this time, the Raëlians will be within yards of the Holocaust Memorial. 

"Whatever their motivation is for using this particular symbology is going to be unknown to anybody passing by on the street and seeing it,'' Anti-Defamation League regional director Andrew Rosenkranz told the Miami Herald.

"And obviously they don't care too much for the sensitivities of others by insisting to use it, particularly in a place like Miami Beach.''

Raëlians say the original meaning of the swastika should prevail over its connection to the Nazis, referring to their logo as a symbol of peace. They modified the design between 1991 and 2007, prompted in part by difficulties securing organizational space in Israel and Lebanon, but in 2007 returned to the swastika and Star of David permanently.

The Raëlians are no strangers to local controversy. Began in 1974 by French race car driver Claude Vorilhon, now known as Raël, the cult teaches that all life on Earth was created in a lab by aliens, and in 2002 a company began by Vorilhon and run by a Raëlian convert announced the birth of a cloned baby in Hollywood.

A fight over the child's care ensued in a Broward courtroom, but no one was ever able to produce the child. What the Raelians can produce are breasts, which they plan to reveal in numbers in Miami Beach tomorrow afternoon.

"If men can go topless why can't women?" asked Donna Newman, a Raëlian from North Miami Beach. "This is not a bunch of crazy people going out there to take their tops off and have people take pictures."

We'd never have guessed, what with all the boobs and swastikas and protesting.

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