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

nor the church has any opinion on the subject of anyone’s sexual orientation.…”
“Someone inserted words that were not his into literature that was propagated under
his name, and that’s been corrected now?” I asked, trying to be clear.
“Yeah, I can only assume that’s what happened,” Davis said. “And by the way,” he
added, referring to Quentin Hubbard, “his son’s not gay.”
During his presentation, Davis showed an impressively produced video that portrayed
Scientology’s worldwide eorts for literary programs and drug education, the
translation of Hubbard’s work into dozens of languages, and the deluxe production
facilities at Gold Base. “The real question is who would produce the kind of material we
produce and do the kinds of things we do, set up the kind of organizational structure
that we set up?” Davis asked. “Or what kind of man, like L. Ron Hubbard, would spend
an entire lifetime researching, putting together the kind of material, suer all the trials
and tribulations and go through all the things he went through in his life … or even with
the things that we, as individuals, have to go through, as part of the new religion? Work
seven days a week, three hundred sixty-ve days a year, fourteen-, fteen-, eighteenhour
days sometimes, out of sheer total complete dedication to our faith. And do it all,
for what? As some sort of sham? Just to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes?” He
concluded, “It’s ridiculous. Nobody works that hard to cheat people. Nobody gets that
little sleep to screw over their fellow man.”
We came to the section in the queries dealing with Hubbard’s war record. His voice
lling with emotion, Davis said that if it was true that Hubbard had not been injured,
then “the injuries that he handled by the use of Dianetics procedures were never
handled, because they were injuries that never existed; therefore, Dianetics is based on a
lie; therefore, Scientology is based on a lie.” He concluded: “The fact of the matter is
that Mr. Hubbard was a war hero.”
I believe everyone on The New Yorker side of the table was taken aback by this daring
equation, one that seemed not only fair but testable. As proof of his claim that Hubbard
had been injured, Davis provided a letter from the US Naval Hospital in Oakland, dated
December 1, 1945. It states that Hubbard had been hospitalized that year for a duodenal
ulcer, but was pronounced “t for duty.” Davis had highlighted a passage in the letter:
“Eyesight very poor, beginning with conjunctivitis actinic in 1942. Lame in right hip
from service connected injury. Infection in bone. Not misconduct, all service connected.”
Davis added later that according to Robert Heinlein, Hubbard’s ankles had suered a
“drumhead-type injury”; this can result, Davis explained, “when a ship is torpedoed or
bombed.”
Despite subsequent requests to produce additional records, this was the only document
Davis provided to prove that the founder of Scientology was not lying about his war
injuries. And yet, Hubbard’s medical records show that only ve days after receiving the
doctor’s note, Hubbard applied for a pension based on his conjunctivitis, an ulcer, a
sprained knee, malaria, and arthritis in his right hip and shoulder. His vision was little
changed from what it had been before the war. This was the same period during which
Hubbard claimed to have been blinded and made a hopeless cripple.
Davis acknowledged that some of Hubbard’s medical records did not corroborate the