Part 6
1978-1997 Public Scientologist. Sometimes Fanatical, Sometimes Not
I had a few periods during which I lacked interest in being very gung-ho in Scn during the late 70s and early 80s, but for most of the 19 years years after leaving the SO, I tried to be a good group member. I eventually got back in good standing as a public Scientologist, and started to again receive auditing. I also marched for Scn at the Armstrong trial, took part in the "Religious Freedom Crusade" protesting the trial in Portland, became a lifetime member of the IAS ($2000 required), later a Honor Roll IAS member ($5000), and upped my contribution to $10k as my share of a Patronage ($40k) made up of me, my wife, my business partner, and his wife. Through most of the 80s and early 90s, I accepted pretty completely the one-sided accounts given by church management during the mission uprising and the subsequent exodus of hundreds into the Independent Movement and in general believed their version of events and their characterizations of Church enemies and defectors as being criminal SPs.
Somewhere around 1985, my old college roommate, with whom I had done my first Scn service and who had served for a time in the GO, called me expressing disagreements with Church management and telling me he was aligned with Bill Franks, a former very senior executive who had left and was briefly active in the Independent Movement. My old best friend wanted to discuss his point of view with me, and told me we had shared so much history and had so much in common he believed I would be able to comprehend the way he had come to regard the group. I was, however, still pretty firmly fixed into the mind-set of a dedicated Scio, and it embarrasses me to say today that I told him without a great deal of reflection or empathy that it seemed to me that he was in a condition lower than doubt and needed to apply the correct condition, and then cut our interchange short. .
I was in the audience on 27 Jan 1986 when the death of LRH was announced and basically bought that presentation by Cooly, DM, and Pat Broeker, whole hog. I didn't read negative books, articles, or watch TV shows critical of the Church, I distrusted the press, and I did not look at negative sites about Scientology on the Internet when it first got going. My only information about Scientology came from events and Church publications. At times while in Scn, I had a blinkered, self-assured, and unquestioning view of life that now as I reflect back I can only regard with dismay. For a time, I was a true believer.
