Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (52 page)

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 disaffected 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 fixed 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-five 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 (That case was voluntarily withdrawn following an avalanche of countersuits.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 identified 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 floored,”
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 efforts 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 with 52 percent of the state’s voters. “When can we expect the public statement?” Davis responded with a proposed letter that would go to the San Diego media, saying that the church had been “erroneously listed among the supporters of
Proposition 8.” “ ‘Erroneous’ doesn’t cut it,” Haggis fired back. “The church may have had the luxury of not taking a position on this issue before, but after taking a position, even erroneously, it can no longer stand neutral.” He demanded that the church openly declare itself in favor of gay rights. “Anything less won’t do.”

Davis stopped responding. When Haggis prodded him again, Davis admitted that the correction to the San Diego media was never actually sent. “To be honest I was dismayed when our emails (which I thought were communications between us) were being cc’d to your daughters,” he wrote. Davis was frustrated because, as he explained to Haggis, the church avoids taking political stances.
¹
Davis insisted that it wasn’t the “church” in San Diego that adopted a position against Prop 8. “It was
one
guy
who somehow got it in his head it would be a neat idea and put Church of Scientology San Diego on the list,” Davis insisted. “When I found out, I had it removed from the list.”

As far as Davis was concerned, that should have been the end of the matter. Any further actions on the part of the church would only call attention to a mistaken position on an issue that the church wanted to go away. “Paul, I’ve received no press inquiries,” he said. “If I were to make a statement on this it would actually bring
more
attention to the subject than if we leave it be.”

But Haggis refused to let the matter drop. “This is not a PR issue, it is a moral issue,” he wrote in February 2009. “Standing neutral is not an option.”

In the final note of this exchange, Haggis conceded, “You were right: nothing happened—it didn’t flap—at least not very much. But I feel we shamed ourselves.”

Since Haggis’s children had been copied on the correspondence with Davis, it helped clarify Lauren’s stance with the church. At first, Davis’s responses gave her hope, but then she realized, “They’re just trying to minimize it as much as possible.” After that, “I was totally done with the church.”

The experience also helped her to see her father in a different light. “It’s like night and day from when I first moved in with him,” she said. “I didn’t know that my dad loved me.”

BECAUSE HAGGIS STOPPED COMPLAINING
, Davis felt that the issue had been laid to rest. But, far from putting the matter behind him, Haggis began an investigation into the church. His inquiry, much of it conducted online, echoed the actions of the lead character he was writing for
Russell Crowe in
The Next Three Days
, who goes on the Internet to research a way to break his wife out of jail.

What is so striking about
Haggis’s investigation is that few prominent figures attached to the Church of Scientology have actually looked into the charges that have surrounded their institution for many years. The church discourages such examination, telling its members that negative articles are “entheta” and will only cause spiritual upset. In 1996, the church sent
CDs to members to help them build their own websites, which would then link them to the Scientology site; included in the software was a filter that would block any sites containing material that vilified the church or revealed esoteric doctrines. Keywords that triggered the censorship were Xenu, OT III, and the names of prominent Scientology critics.

Although Haggis never used such a filter, one already existed in his mind. During his thirty-four years in the church he had purposely avoided asking too many questions or reading materials that he knew would disparage his faith. But now, frustrated by his exchange with Davis, he began “poking around.” He came upon an interview on YouTube with Tommy Davis that had been broadcast by CNN in May 2008. “The worldwide interest in Scientology
has never been higher,” Davis boasts on the show. “Scientology has grown more in the last five years than the last five decades combined.” The anchor,
John Roberts, asks Davis about the church’s policy of
disconnection, in which followers are urged to separate themselves from friends or family members who might be critical of the organization. “This is a perfect example of how the Internet turns things and twists things,” Davis responds. “There’s no such thing as disconnection as you’re characterizing it. And certainly, we have to understand—”

“Well, what is disconnection?” Roberts tries to interject.

“Scientology is a new religion,” Davis continues, talking over the host. “The majority of Scientologists in the world, they’re first generation. So their family members aren’t going to be Scientologists.… So,
certainly, someone who is a Scientologist is going to respect their family members’ beliefs—”

“Well, what is disconnection?” Roberts asks again.

“And we consider family to be a building block of any society, so anything that’s characterized as disconnection, or this kind of thing, it’s just not true. There isn’t any such policy.”

Haggis knew this was a lie. His wife,
Deborah, had disconnected from her parents twice. When she was in her twenties and acting in
Dallas
, her mother and stepfather broke away from the church. They were close friends of
Hana Eltringham, who had stood up for them at their wedding, so when they had doubts about their faith, they went to see her. Eltringham was then counseling people who were considering getting out of Scientology or other new religions. She helped Scientologists confront the contradictions that were implicit in their faith, such as Hubbard speaking of events that had taken place trillions or quadrillions of years in the past, although scientists estimate the age of the universe to be less than 14 billion years, or the fact that it has never been shown that anyone has ever obtained any enhanced OT abilities. Eltringham also talked about the abuses she observed and experienced. “Hana told us
how
Sea Org members were treated,”
Mary Benjamin, Deborah’s mother, recalled, “how they were kept in a basement in Los Angeles and fed rice and beans if they didn’t keep their stats up. How, in the desert, in terrible heat, they would march in a circle for hours.”

Like many active members of the church, the Benjamins kept money on account—in their case, $2,500—for future courses they intended to take. Deborah’s mother insisted on getting the money back. Deborah knew what a big deal that was for the church. She didn’t speak to her parents for more than three years, automatically assuming that they must have been declared Suppressive Persons. But when her sister was about to get married, Deborah wrote to the International Justice Chief, the Scientology official in charge of such matters, who said that she was allowed to see her parents as long as they didn’t say anything against Scientology. The Benjamins readily agreed.

A decade later, however, Deborah went to Clearwater, intending to take some upper-level courses, and learned that the previous ruling no longer applied. If she wanted to do more training, she would have to confront her parents’ mistakes. The church recommended that she take the
Potential Trouble Source/Suppressive Persons course.

Many Scientologists have taken the same course. Deborah’s friend
Kelly Preston had taken it as well. “I was PTS, but I
didn’t realize it, and so I was told, ‘You need to be on PTS/SP,’ ” Preston later recalled in her interview for
Celebrity
magazine. She discovered that her life was full of Suppressive Persons. “Being an artist and having a lot of theta, you really attract those type of people,” Preston said. (
“Theta” is a Scientology term for life force.) “I ended up having to handle or disconnect from quite a few different people.”

It took Deborah a year to complete the course, but it didn’t change her parents’ status. She petitioned officials at the
Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles for help. They put her on another program that took two more years to finish. Still, nothing changed. If she failed to “handle” her parents—by persuading them to make amends to the church—she would have to disconnect not only from them but also from everyone who spoke to them, including her siblings. She realized, “It was that
, or else I had to give up being a Scientologist.” The fact that
Paul refused to disconnect from her parents posed yet another conflict.

According to the church, Deborah’s parents had been part of a class-action lawsuit against Scientology by disaffected members in 1987, which was dismissed the following year.
²
The church required them to denounce the anti-Scientology group and offer a “token” restitution. That meant performing community service and following a rehabilitation course, called
A to E, for penitents seeking to get back into the church’s good graces; it includes repaying debts, taking additional courses, and making public declarations of error. Deborah told her parents that if they wanted to remain in contact with her they had to follow the church’s procedures. Her parents, worried that they would also be cut off from their grandson, agreed to perform community service. For three months they delivered food in a Meals on Wheels program in Los Angeles. But the church wasn’t satisfied. Deborah was told that if she maintained contact with her parents she would be labeled a Potential Trouble Source—a designation that would alienate her from the entire Scientology community and render her ineligible for further training. A senior official counseled her to agree to disconnect from her parents and have them formally branded SPs. “Until then
, they won’t turn around and recognize their responsibilities,” he said.

“Okay, fine,” Deborah responded. “Go ahead and declare them. Maybe it’ll get better.”

The official then granted Deborah permission to begin upper-level coursework in Clearwater.

In August 2006, a formal notice on yellow parchment, called a “goldenrod,” was posted at the Celebrity Centre declaring Deborah’s parents Suppressive Persons, explaining that they had withdrawn the money they had placed on deposit for future coursework and that they had associated with “squirrels”—that is, they received unauthorized Scientology counseling. A month later, Mary Benjamin sent her daughter a letter. “We tried to do
what you asked, Deborah. We worked the whole months of July & Aug. on A-E.” They gave the church back the $2,500 for the courses that they never intended to take. After all that, she continued, a church adjudicator had told them to hand out three hundred copies of L. Ron Hubbard’s booklet “The Way to Happiness” to libraries and to document each exchange with photographs. Her parents had had enough. “If this can’t be resolved, we will have to say Good-Bye to you & James will lose his Grand-Parents,” her mother wrote. “This is ridiculous.”