MORE INFO: Statement from the Church of Scientology
Church of Scientology Statement:
The Church of Scientology opposes discrimination of any sort and we practice a policy of inclusion among our parishioners. As a minority group we understand what it is like to be discriminated against and persecuted. We are staunch defenders of human rights.
The fundamental belief of Scientology is that each individual is an immortal spiritual being and all of their personality and individuality are part of that spiritual being. They are not the body they inhabit for their time on earth, be it male or female. It is just a shell which is discarded upon death. The spirit lives on in a different body, lifetime after lifetime, and can be in a female body one life and a male body the next. If one takes the principle that they have lived before and will live again, then one gains a different perspective on the nature of gender. The native individual – the spiritual being has no innate sexuality. It is something that is assumed for each life.
Our purpose is to assist people to become more able and spiritually aware.
The Facts:
Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard was deeply homophobic. He wrote the following:
- "The sexual pervert such as homosexuality, lesbianism, sexual sadism, etc., is actually quite ill physically... he is very far from culpable for his condition, but he is also far from normal and extremely dangerous to society”
- “Such people were skulking cowards who yet contains enough perfidious energy to strike back, but not enough courage ever to give warning."
- “No social order will survive which does not remove these people from its midst."
- "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;"
- "The only answers would seem to be the permanent quarantine of such persons from society to avoid the contagion of their insanities and the general turbulence which they bring to any order, thus forcing it lower on the scale, or processing such persons until they have attained a level on the tone scale which gives them value."
Hubbard prescribed treatments to ‘cure’ homosexuality, including Scientology ‘auditing’ and quarantine.
Many former Scientologists, including some of its top executives, have detailed the bigotry and hatred in Scientology towards the LGBT community.
Oscar winning Director Paul Haggis quit Scientology after 30 years due to their backing of California’s homophobic Proposition 8 law. Haggis has two daughters who are lesbians.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of documented accounts of abuses of human rights in Scientology, many carried out by its leader David Miscavige.
