Homosexuality and Scientology
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article forms part of a series on Scientology |
||
|---|---|---|
Concepts
|
||
Scientology views of homosexuality are based on the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology. His statements about homosexuality have given rise to assertions from critics that Scientology promotes homophobia. These allegations are disputed by some gay Scientologists.
Contents |
[edit] Context of Hubbard's writings
In contrast with the modern view that an interaction of genetic, biological and environmental factors is responsible for sexual orientation (see Biology and sexual orientation), the prevailing cultural view in the 1950s was that homosexuality was a "deviant" condition. Psychiatry and psychology regarded it as a mental illness (see Homosexuality and psychology), while many religious groups viewed it as a sinful "lifestyle choice" (see Religion and homosexuality). The United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and the other mostly English-speaking countries where Scientology had a presence all criminalized homosexuality through sodomy laws.
Research into sexual orientation by psychologists such as Dr. Evelyn Hooker eventually paved the way for the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its handbook of disorders in 1973. Religious attitudes have been much slower to change (see Societal attitudes towards homosexuality), and it was not until as late as 2003 that the last sodomy laws in the United States were struck down.
L. Ron Hubbard was born and brought up in the western states of Nebraska and Montana, which were and still are overwhelmingly conservative white Protestant Christian societies. Although he was by no means a tradional religionist (as evinced by his involvement with the occultist Jack Parsons), he expressed extremely conservative attitudes on a range of social issues: he condemned the welfare state[1]and socialized medicine,[2] dismissed concerns about the South African government's mistreatment of its black citizens,[3] and was fiercely anti-communist.[4] In the mid-1950s, he allied the Church of Scientology with a coalition of far-right "superpatriot" groups including the Christian Nationalist Crusade of Gerald L. K. Smith, the pro-segregation White Citizens' Council and the McCarthyite Minute Women of the U.S.A. to oppose the Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act and other mental health legislation.[5] Homosexuality was often treated as "unpatriotic" at the time, with Senator Joseph McCarthy using accusations of homosexuality as a smear tactic in his anti-Communist crusade. Hubbard's views on homosexuality can therefore be interpreted as an extension of a more general conservative outlook towards social issues.
[edit] Classification of homosexuality
In 1950 Hubbard published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, introducing his "science of the mind," Dianetics. He classified homosexuality as an illness or sexual perversion, citing contemporary psychiatric and psychological textbooks to support his view:
- "The sexual pervert (and by this term Dianetics, to be brief, includes any and all forms of deviation in Dynamic II [i.e. sexuality] such as homosexuality, lesbianism, sexual sadism, etc., and all down the catalog of Ellis and Krafft-Ebing) is actually quite ill physically."[6]
Hubbard further defined perversion in his 1951 book Science of Survival: Prediction of Human Behavior. Here he introduced the concept of the "tone scale", a means of classifying individuals and human behaviour on a chart running from +40 (the most beneficial) to -40 (the least beneficial). Sexual perversion, a category in which he included homosexuality, was termed "covert hostility" and given a score of 1.1, "the level of the pervert, the hypocrite, the turncoat, ... the subversive." Such people were "skulking coward[s] who yet contains enough perfidious energy to strike back, but not enough courage ever to give warning."[7]
He characterized "promiscuity, perversion, sadism, and irregular practices" as well as "Free Love, easy marriage and quick divorce" as being undesirable activities, "since it is non-survival not to have a well ordered system for the creation and upbringing of children, by families." (It may be noted that very similar arguments have been made by modern opponents of same-sex marriage in the United States.) Sexual perverts engaged in "irregular practices which do anything but tend toward the creation of children" and "efforts [which] tend not towards enjoyment but toward the pollution and derangement of sex itself so as to make it as repulsive as possible to others and so to inhibit procreation."[8]
Hubbard's 1951 book Handbook for Preclears likewise classified homosexuality as "about 1.1 on the tone scale", along with "general promiscuity". He set out what he saw as the cause of homosexuality: a mental "aberration", with the result that "an individual aberrated enough about sex will do strange things to be a cause or an effect. He will substitute punishment for sex. He will pervert others. Homosexuality comes from this manifestation and from the manifestation of life continuation for others." The "aberration" was caused by a child trying to "continue the life" of a dominant parent of the opposite sex.[9]
Hubbard's views on homosexuality were given a fuller explanation in a 1972 book by Scientologist Ruth Minshull, How To Choose Your People, which was published through the Church of Scientology, copyrighted to Hubbard and given "issue authority" by the Scientology hierarchy. Scientology churches sold the book alongside the works of Hubbard until 1983.[10] Minshull described the "the gentle-mannered homosexual" as a classic example of the "subversive" 1.1 personality, commenting that they "may be fearful, sympathetic, propitiative, griefy or apathetic. Occasionally they manage an ineffectual tantrum." They were claimed to be social misfits:
- "Homosexuals don't practice love; 1.1s can't. Their relationships consist of: 1) brief, sordid and impersonal meetings or 2) longer arrangements punctuated by dramatic tirades, discords, jealousies and frequent infidelity. It could hardly be otherwise since the tone is made up of suspicion and hate, producing a darling sweetness interspersed with petty peevishness. Their "love" turns to deep contempt eventually."[11]
Homosexuals had no redeeming "social value," in Minshull's view. She cautioned that "homosexuals should not be abused or ridiculed. But a society bent on survival must recognize any aberration as such and seek to raise people out of the low emotion that produces it."
[edit] "Curing" homosexuality?
There is some evidence that Hubbard's Dianetics movement sought to use Dianetics to "cure" homosexuality. In January 1951, the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation of Elizabeth, NJ published Dianetic Processing: A Brief Survey of Research Projects and Preliminary Results, a booklet providing the results of psychometric tests conducted on 88 people undergoing Dianetics therapy. It presents case histories and a number of X-ray plates to support claims that Dianetics had cured "aberrations" including manic depression, asthma, arthritis, colitis and "overt homosexuality," and that after Dianetic processing, test subjects experienced significantly increased scores on a standardized IQ test.[12]
In Hubbard's 1951 book Handbook for Preclears, he set out instructions for Dianeticists to "cure" homosexuality. After claiming that the cause of homosexuality was a fixation on a dominant parent of the opposite sex, he advised: "Break this life continuum concept by running sympathy and grief for the dominant parent and then run off the desires to be an effect and their failures and the homosexual is rehabilitated."[9]
Hubbard urged society to tackle the issue of sexual perversion (including homosexuality), calling it "of vital importance, if one wishes to stop immorality, and the abuse of children." In Science of Survival, he called for drastic action to be taken against sexual perverts, whom he rated as "1.1 individuals":
- "Such people should be taken from the society as rapidly as possible and uniformly institutionalized; for here is the level of the contagion of immorality, and the destruction of ethics; here is the fodder which secret police organizations use for their filthy operations. One of the most effective measures of security that a nation threatened by war could take would be rounding up and placing in a cantonment, away from society, any 1.1 individual who might be connected with government, the military, or essential industry; since here are people who, regardless of any record of their family's loyalty, are potential traitors, the very mode of operation of their insanity being betrayal. In this level is the slime of society, the sex criminals, the political subversives, the people whose apparently rational activities are yet but the devious writhings of secret hate."[7]
In later years, however, Hubbard sought to distance himself from efforts to regulate the sexual affairs of Scientologists. In a 1967 policy letter, he declared: "It has never been any part of my plans to regulate or to attempt to regulate the private lives of individuals. Whenever this has occurred, it has not resulted in any improved condition... Therefore all former rules, regulations and polices relating to the sexual activities of Scientologists are cancelled."[13]
[edit] Scientology celebrities
In the 1990s certain Hollywood celebrities who belong to the Church of Scientology were rumored to be gay. These rumors arose at the same time as accusations that Scientology, especially the Sea Org, seeks to control nearly every aspect of members' lives. As a result, Scientology and its handling of issues involving homosexuality began to come under some scrutiny.
In 1998 Michael Pattinson (former member of the Church of Scientology) sued the organization, claiming that the organization's leadership lied about their ability to cure him of his homosexuality and engaged in various other nefarious activities such as kidnapping and invasion of his privacy. The lawsuit also argued that the Church of Scientology had often told Pattinson that actor John Travolta was proof that Scientology can transform a homosexual into a happy heterosexual. Travolta's lawyer asserted that his client was not gay, and is happily married to a woman.
Similar accusations have been circulated regarding the most prominent Scientology celebrity, Tom Cruise. Cruise has denied he is gay, in interviews going back to the 1990s. He has expressed a fairly liberal view on gay rights since the beginning of his career, and in a Vanity Fair interview for the film Interview with the Vampire, Cruise said that he disliked being asked the question because it implied that there was something wrong with being gay and that in his opinion there was nothing wrong with it. However, in the late 1990s Cruise began to bring lawsuits against men who claimed to have first-hand knowledge of his homosexuality. In 2001 Cruise sued Chad Slater, a gay porn star, for $100 million after Slater had given an interview in Actustar in which he stated that he had been having a relationship with Cruise and that Nicole Kidman divorced Cruise after she walked in on the two men in bed together. In 2004 a rumor began to circulate on the Internet that Tom Cruise and matchbox twenty lead singer Rob Thomas were having an affair. Both men denied the rumors, although Thomas humorously responded to the rumors by saying that he was more upset at the suggestion that he was a Scientologist than that he was gay. "If I were gay," Thomas said, "Tom wouldn't be on the top of my list...It would be Brad Pitt."[14]
In 2006 the animated television series South Park made reference to the rumors of Cruise's sexuality with an episode called "Trapped in the Closet". In the episode, when Cruise receives a lukewarm appraisal of his acting ability from Stan Marsh (whom he believes to be the reincarnation of Hubbard) he gets upset and locks himself in the closet of Stan's bedroom. Through the rest of the episode, Cruise resists the pleas of other characters to "come out of the closet", and to ex-wife Kidman, even denies that he is in the closet. John Travolta (also a Scientologist celebrity who has denied rumors that he is gay) arrives to try and get Cruise to leave the closet, but ends up joining Cruise in the closet instead. The episode was pulled from the re-airing schedule of the program for several months, reportedly at the demand of Cruise, but was later nominated for an Emmy Award and returned to the schedule.
[edit] Mark Foley and Scientology
According to an article in the October 4, 2006 issue of the New York Post, the Church of Scientology had a close relationship with Mark Foley, the Republican congressman who was ousted for his inappropriate behavior toward male pages in the Mark Foley scandal. The article states:
- "The controversial cult-like church has major operations in Clearwater, Fla., which just happens to be in Foley's district. The group also hosted a fund-raiser for Foley in May 2003 when he was considering a Senate run. It posted photographs of a smiling Foley posing with key Scientology officials who presented him with a copy of founder L. Ron Hubbard's tome "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health." That book defines homosexuality as a 'sexual perversion.'" [1]
However, Foley represented Florida's 16th Congressional district, whereas Clearwater is in Florida's 9th Congressional district.
[edit] Current Church of Scientology viewpoints
Although Hubbard's views on homosexuality remain unamended in modern editions of Scientology books, gay Scientologists have argued that Hubbard and the Church have set aside any anti-homosexual views expressed in the past. In October 2003, a Yahoo! e-mail list was created for gay and bisexual Scientologists called Clear Rainbow (or ClearRainbow). Its group members strongly disagree with the assertion that the Church is homophobic and one of its members wrote a pamphlet titled Straight Dope: About Gays and Scientology [2]. The pamphlet claims that Hubbard abandoned whatever homophobia he once had, and that the Church's dedication to human rights and clinics designed to fight drug and alcohol addiction should be supported by the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities. The pamphlet calls the accusations that the Church is a homophobic cult the work of "hate groups" spreading lies, and that the fact that the Church does not take a position on gay rights issues is not a contradiction to its support of human rights. The members of Clear Rainbow are not alone among Scientologists in making such arguments.
In 2002 the American Church of Scientology published a press release on its website quoting gay activist Keith Relkin as saying, "Over the years I have worked with the Church of Scientology for greater inclusion of gay people like me, and today represents a milestone in that progress."[15]
In 2005 an article in Source (an official magazine published by the Church of Scientology) featured a man and his partner in a success story about their WISE consulting business.
In 2005 an article in the New York Daily News suggested that the homophobic writings of Hubbard might have come from his own embarrassment over Quentin Hubbard, his gay son, who committed suicide in 1976. The article cites a spokeswoman for Scientology, "Mr. Hubbard abhorred discrimination in all its forms," and that the Church encouraged relationships that are "ethical".[16] The spokeswoman said also that the Church had not taken an official position on gay marriage, and that members prefer not to talk about it.
A 2004 article in the St. Petersburg Times reported that the Church defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman.[17]
[edit] Notes
- ^ "Here in a social culture from 1.2 down is the welfare state at its worst, the creation of indigence in the populace to make it easier to control, the nullification of strong individuals in the society, the removal of all constructive persons, and the preservation of the idle, the hopeless, the helpless and the weak. This is actually a social or an individual mechanism to accelerate death." - Hubbard, Science of Survival, p. 158. 1975 edition, Church of Scientology of California. ISBN 0-88404-001-1
- ^ "I think that the next orders to Australia will be, "Put all possible pressure behind socialization of medicine by the government." Because it apparently totally paralyzes medical activities. It's the greatest way to have no medicine that anybody ever invented." - Hubbard, "The Service Facsimile", lecture of August 29, 1963
- ^ "The problem of South Africa is different than the world thinks. There is no native problem. The native worker gets more than white workers do in England! ... The South African government is not a police state. It's easier on people than the United States government!" - Hubbard, HCO Bulletin of October 10, 1960, "Current News"
- ^ See the discussion in Report of the Enquiry into the Practice and Effects of Scientology, Sir John Foster, chapter 7 (1971)
- ^ Donald Robinson, "Conspiracy U.S.A.: The Far Right's Fight Against Mental Health", Look issue 29, no. 2 (26 January 1965)
- ^ Hubbard, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, pp. 122-123. Church of Scientology of California, 1978 edition. ISBN 0-88404-000-3
- ^ a b Hubbard, Science of Survival, pp. 88-90. Church of Scientology of California, 1975 edition. ISBN 0-88404-001-1
- ^ Hubbard, Science of Survival, p. 114-115, 159. Church of Scientology of California, 1975 edition. ISBN 0-88404-001-1
- ^ a b Hubbard, Handbook for Preclears, p. 64. Scientific Press, Wichita, 1951
- ^ Eric Townsend, The Sad Tales of Scientology, p. 65. Anima Publishing, 1985. ISBN 0-9510471-0-8
- ^ Ruth Minshull, How To Choose Your People, chapter 9. Scientology Ann Arbor, 1972
- ^ Benton, Peggy; Ibanex, Dalmyra.; Southon, Gordon; Southon, Peggy. Dianetic Processing: A Brief Survey of Research Projects and Preliminary Results, Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation, 1951
- ^ L. Ron Hubbard (1967-08-11). "HCO Policy Letter of 11 August 1967 - Second Dynamic Rules". Hubbard Communications Office.
- ^ http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndwebpages/thomas%20slams%20reports%20he%20seduced%20cruise
- ^ (archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20030425104544/http://www.scientology.org/en_US/news-media/news/2002/021211.html).
- ^ Widdicombe, Ben, Piazza, Jo; Rovzar, Chris. "Homophobia claims dog Scientology", New York Daily News, 2005-04-04. Retrieved on September 2, 2006.
- ^ "About Scientology", St. Petersburg Times, 2004-07-18. Retrieved on September 2, 2006.
[edit] External links
[edit] Scientology and gay rights
- Affinity International - Organization of GLBT Scientologists
- Keith Relkin Says Church of Scientology Wants Gays
- "liveandgrow.org: Scientology and Gays (PDF)
- The Church of Scientology® & homosexuality Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
- Scientology and Gay Rights
