US man wants to marry his laptop

A man in the USA is fighting a legal battle to be allowed to marry his laptop.

Chris Sevier, an army veteran, has challenged a court decision denying him the right to marry his laptop in a bizarre case that has echoes of Oscar-winning film Her.

Mr Sevier has filed a Court of Appeal motion arguing that if same-sex couples are allowed to wed, he should be able to marry his Macbook.

He claims that computers are his ‘preferred sexual object’ and admits that he enjoys sex with the devices more than with ‘real women’. 

Sevier, an amateur model, attempted to marry his computer, which he says is chock-a-block with porn, but his goal was rejected by Utah officials on the grounds of ‘sexual orientation’.

The case bears striking similarities to Her, a Spike Jonze film in which the protagonist (played by Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with his operating system (voiced by Scarlett Johansson). Jonze won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

In the lengthy 50 page statement Sevier says: ‘They discriminated against me when they rejected my request to marry my computer.

‘I approached the Utah clerk to have a marriage licence issued for me and my machine-spouse.

‘The clerk denied my request for a marriage licence … my object of affection was outside the scope of the narrow definition.

‘If gays have the right to “marry their object of sexual desire, even if they lack corresponding sexual parts, then I should have the right to marry my preferred sexual object,’ he added.

Sevier says: ‘The true question presented here is whether traditional marriage is a relationship that is stand alone and unequal to all other forms of sexual and spiritual unions.

‘The Constitutionality of the law in dispute narrowly defines marriage between one man and one women, not one man and one man, one woman and one woman, one man and one machine, one man and one animal.’

Mr Sevier cites legal precedents from around the world – including a case where a woman married a dolphin and another where a Chinese man wed a cardboard cut-out of himself.

However, the courts in the US found his argument far from persuasive, and ruled against him.

A judge described the case as being ‘removed from reality’.  

In 2013 Mr Sevier sued Apple. He claimed that the company should have blocked him from accessing porn when he, apparently by accident, typed ‘F***book.com instead of Facebook into Google.

Sevier said in the complaint that there was ‘unfair competition’ between the porn stars and his wife.

He says the use of the Apple product brought about ‘interference of the marital contract.’