February 14th, 2011
Steve Sailer highlights a little nugget from the New Yorker’s big Scientology take-out. Quick summary: The New Yorker piece is hung largely on the back of former Scientologist Paul Haggis. Haggis broke with the group after 35 years because he found that a single member of a Scientology office in San Diego signed a petition in favor of Prop. 8 and the group’s galactic national leadership declined to publicly renounce the member to Haggis’s personal satisfaction.
Makes you wonder how Haggis gets around in the world at all. I’m sure plenty of Ralph’s employees signed petitions–or maybe even voted for!–Prop. 8. Same’s probably true for In-and-Out Burger and 76 stations and banks and . . .
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Actually, the San Diego chapter of the CoS endorsed Prop 8, and Haggis reckoned that the ‘church’ should publicly retract the endorsement. That doesn’t seem the slightest bit unreasonable to me.
The CoS’s refusal to make a public retraction then led Haggis to research the CoS on the Internet, something ‘church’ members are discouraged from doing. His research led him to more disturbing information – such as how Tommy Davis lied on CNN about ‘disconnection’ policy. Anyone who read the article would know that.
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Chelsea,
That’s half right. On Haggis’ request Scientology almost immediately quietly retracted the SD chapter’s endorsement of “yes,” but Haggis insisted that it actively endorse “no.” We may differ on whether it’s reasonable to insist that an organization reverse its standing policy of avoiding political endorsements. You are right though that the political issue was less the cause than the catalyst for Haggis to leave Scientology as it let him see all the grotesque abuses and lies.
I thought the most interesting thing about the piece was how much Scientology’s doctrines were a period piece of the 1950s. Obviously the part that struck Haggis as anachronistic was the semi-retracted doctrine that homosexuality is a sexual perversion, but this isn’t that unusual as many or even most cultures throughout history have to a lesser or greater extent stigmatized homosexuality (at least for males in the passive role). Rather, what really marks Scientology’s origins as a 1950s time capsule are the open doctrines taken from Freud and the OT3 esoterica about space tyrants.
Suddenly Scientology Seems Reasonable . . . — Jonathan Last Online February 14, 2011 at 5:24 pm
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