going-clear-scientology-hollywood-and-the-prison-of-belief-by-lawrence-wright-2

homosexual activity. Hubbard describes this as “the most dangerous and wicked level.…
Here is the person who smiles when he inserts a knife blade between your vertebrae.”
“This is the level of the pervert, the hypocrite, the turncoat. This is the level of the
subversive.… A 1.1 is the most dangerously insane person in society and is likely to
cause the most damage.… Such people should be taken from the society as rapidly as
possible and uniformly institutionalized.” Another way of dealing with them, he writes,
is “to dispose of them quietly and without sorrow.” He went on: “The sudden and abrupt
deletion of all individuals occupying the lower bands of the Tone Scale from the social
order would result in an almost instant rise in the cultural tone and would interrupt the
dwindling spiral into which any society may have entered.”
Hubbard occasionally moderated his stance, although he never entirely repudiated or
discarded his prejudice. In 1952, he said, “Homosexuality is about as serious as sneezes.”
In 1965, he refers in an executive letter to a “squirrel” who, he says, “was sacked for
homosexuality and theft.” Another disaected Scientologist, Hubbard notes in the same
letter, “is a set-up for an arrest as a homosexual.” Two years later, when social attitudes
toward gays were slowly changing, he declared, “It has never been any part of my plans
to regulate or attempt to regulate the private lives of individuals.” However, because
everything Hubbard wrote is sacrosanct in the church, these early views are indelibly
xed in the minds of many Scientologists. Long after the founder’s death it was still
generally believed that auditing would “sort out” homosexuality. Gays in the church
were frequently pressed to buy courses or take additional auditing in order to handle
their condition.
The ambivalence in the church over the question of sexual orientation is evident in its
treatment of Travolta. Over the years, the church has acted to protect his reputation.
Marty Rathbun has said there were many allegations that he helped “to make go away.”
He sometimes worked in concert with Travolta’s attorneys, attempting to keep stories
out of the press. In 2003, a gay artist, Michael Pattinson, sued the church, Travolta, and
more than twenty other individuals, claiming that the star had been held up as an
example of how Scientology can cure homosexuality. Pattinson said that he spent
twenty-ve years in the church, and half a million dollars, trying to change his sexual
orientation, without success. (That case was voluntarily withdrawn following an
avalanche of countersuits. Both Pattinson and his attorney say they were driven into
bankruptcy.)
Haggis identied with homosexuals because they were a minority. They were the
underdogs. They were also two of his daughters. The backers of Proposition 8 were
using scare tactics to drive their campaign, claiming that homosexuals were going to
take over the schools and teach people to be gay. Lauren Haggis actually heard people
saying that. Then someone pointed her to a website that listed the proposition’s backers.
The Church of Scientology of San Diego was on the list. “I was just oored,” she said.
“And so I sent an e-mail to my sisters and my dad saying, um, what’s going on?”
Haggis began peppering Tommy Davis with e-mails, demanding that the church
support eorts to reverse the marriage ban. “I am going to an anti Prop 8 rally in a
couple of hours,” he wrote on November 11, 2008, a week after the initiative passed