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The release of Steve Mango’s testimonial filmabout what it’s like Inside Scientology’s Celebrity Centre called attention to the abuses and and predation and lies of the “church” of Scientology Inc. But a sizeable chunk of the 2 1/2 hour presentation talked about the perception of Scientology Inc’s institutionalized anti-gay headset. But not all Scientologists share that headset.Code:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfKqOUMrCw8#t=191
During my years in Scientology, I have often heard the anguished question: “What’s wrong with being gay if you’re a Scientologist?”
Most often this question was asked by someone who was gay or was a Scientologist family member of someone who was gay.
This is an excellent question and one that has plagued Dianetics and Scientology since the beginning.
To answer it, I think I have to start with Scientology dogma on the matter.
Then I’ll tell you some personal observations about how the church approaches the matter, and some personal observations about how I’ve seen it addressed in auditing.
DMSMH (1950) says:There’s a few more references in DMSMH but that one is key.The sexual pervert (and by this term dianetics, to be brief, includes any and all forms of deviation in Dynamic II such as homosexuality, lesbianism, sexual sadism, etc. and all down the catalogue of Ellis and Krafft-Ebing) is actually quite ill physically. Perversion as an illness has so many manifestations that it must be spread through the entire gamut of classes from (1) to (5) above. Over-development of sexual organs, underdevelopment, seminal inhibition or magnification, etc. are found some in one pervert, some in another. And the sum of it is that the pervert is always a very ill person in one way or another, whether he is conscious of it or not. He is very far from culpable for his condition, but he is also so far from normal and so extremely dangerous to society that the tolerance of perversion is as thoroughly bad for society as punishment for it.
Lacking proper means prior to this time, society has been caught between tolerance and punishment, and the problem of perversion has, of course, not been resolved.
The Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation (Science of Survival, 1951) says at tone level 1.1 in column 4 that a person will manifest “promiscuity, perversion, sadism, irregular practices” and will “use children for sadistic purposes”. In column 7 it says that “Sexual criminals” are at tone level 1.1 and will display negative ethics.
In Handbook for Preclears, it says 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”…“Homosexuality is about 1.1 on the Tone Scale. So is general promiscuity.”
The Way to Happiness says in Precept 3: “Don’t Be Promiscuous”.
VALENCES AND VALENCE SHIFTERS (lecture of 7 September 1950) saysFORECAST ON NEW TECHNIQUES (lecture of 31 December 1951)Homosexuality is a valence shifter of enormous magnitude. The way to resolve such a case is to find the dramatization on the part of either parent which would, in your opinion, thoroughly shift valence to the opposite sex. Keep straightwiring this case and working it way down the track until you eventually find that dramatization, and it will be a powerful one.
Right there is the exact pinpoint cause.SERVICE FACSIMILES (lecture of 11 January 1952)You want to read out a homosexual case? You want to find out why this person is homosexual in some fashion or other? Just look it over and you realize that they killed somebody of the other sex — I mean, it’s that easy — and they are doing a life continuum on the sexual life of the other person. Awful simple.For instance, there is the case of the homosexual. A homosexual is in a very, very fine spin. They are in the most beautiful spins of anybody you would care to run into, and yet there is a technique which cracks such a case relatively easily. You do nothing but run the desire to be an effect on the second dynamic; just start scanning it. What you will get! He will hand out computations faster than you can pick them up; he will start handing out computations wildly — untrue ones. He will start handing stuff out just too fast to roll—my experience has been on it—until all of a sudden he sort of breaks down in his desperation and hands you the computation.
Now, you may be tempted to think that LRH spent an awful lot of time writing or lecturing about homosexuals, but factually, the word “Hitler” shows up about 10 times as much in LRH’s early writings (1950-1952) as “homosexual”.
The problem, as Paul Haggis will tell you, is that in recent years, the church has taken an institutionalized anti-gay stance.
You can see from these writings, and the fact that since the release of the Basics in 2007 all Scientologists have been forced to study or restudy the LRH’s books, that Scientologists have been force-fed that homosexuals are lying promiscuous perverts, and cannot be trusted.
I know that the church issued a number of SPDs (Scientology Policy Directives) in the late 80s and early 90s that dealt with the treatment of homosexuals in the church. I wish I’d kept copies of them now, but I can recall specifically the way to deal with homosexuals on the Purification Rundown, such as to get medical clearance that they did not have HIV and if such could not be obtained, the org was not to accept them as a preclear and to treat them the same as if they had a terminal disease, such as cancer.
If you’re in the church, and have a terminal disease such as cancer, you’re labeled an illegal pc and cannot be audited.
I remember that at LA Org there was a big flap about a homosexual in the Academy that was busy enturbulating the other students by trying to have liaisons with them. Naturally, it was off to Ethics for that guy, and since he insisted it was his right to have homosexual liaisons with whoever he wanted, no matter if he enturbulated them, he was routed out.
Other cases I am familiar with are those where a homosexual Scientology public would engage in homosexual acts while on a business trip or while “out on the town” and the church ethics terminals insisted that the person do conditions and get HIV-cleared before being let back into the course room.
In my personal experience as an auditor and C/S, homosexuals present a unique challenge. I have known a number of homosexuals who wanted something about themselves “fixed”, such as their claustrophobia, agoraphobia, or fear of heights, and wanted written guarantees from the C/S and auditors that the tech staff would not try to “make them straight”.
Such a guarantee cannot of course be given. Not because auditors and C/Ses want to “make gays straight”. It’s because you can’t guarantee that that the incident you run today may have as its basic postulate the reason the person is gay this lifetime.
Generally speaking, the preclear has to consider that his homosexuality is at least part of what is “ruining his life”; otherwise, s/he won’t go anywhere near “homosexuality” in auditing.
If you know Scientology theory about the mind and its structure, you know that auditing goes where it goes.
Because of that, I can tell you that a homosexual who “doesn’t want to be made straight” is a very difficult case to audit. More than once I have asked such a case for the “earlier-similar incident” and the person won’t go there because he’s either sure or is afraid that dredging up that incident might “make him straight”.
In session, such a person monitors every session action to ensure he’s not being “made straight”. And to that degree, that person is not in-session. Therefore, the case gain per hour is very low.
In fact, he is being “audited over a problem”…the problem being that he doesn’t want to be “made straight”.
A homosexual that “doesn’t want to be made straight” is actually operating at cross-purposes to an auditor. That’s not because the auditor is trying to make the preclear “straight”. It’s because the preclear’s goals and the auditor’s goals conflict. A good auditor wants to get every erg of charge off the pc’s case, whether or not it has to do with homosexuality. A bad auditor will enter into a set of agreements to “leave some aspects of the preclear’s case alone”.
When a preclear has one session goal (to not be made straight) and the auditor has a conflicting session goal (to get every erg of charge off the person’s case), the preclear and the auditor are operating at cross-purposes, and the preclear is thus being audited over a problem. HCOB AUDITOR’S RIGHTS tells us that auditing the preclear over a problem results in “No TA” or no case gain.
Contributing to the problem is that homosexuality as a condition is emotionally and politically charged in today’s world.
If you instead imagine that a preclear is not homosexual, but is fixated on gambling, you can see that an auditor’s goal…to clear the preclear…isn’t political or contra-preclear.
From a case supervision standpoint, I have personal experience with homosexuality being rooted in service facsimiles, sometimes whole-track service facsimiles. Getting a practicing homosexual far enough up the bridge to run the service facsimiles on the case, which includes a thoroughly run Grade IV and NED Service Facsimile Handling is often very tough, because for some, the “promiscuity factor” keeps interfering with the auditing, and the pc spends inordinate amounts of time in ethics.
If a homosexual makes it all the way through NED case completion, s/he can be given an Expanded Dianetics program, including Expanded Dianetics Service Facsimile handling.
Also, valence lists, done by recalls or with NED, can be very useful in dissecting such a case.
The problem in worrying about whether or not John Travolta is homosexual…or was homosexual…is a political one.
If John “comes out” in one fashion or another, the church could be inundated by homosexuals who want to be “fixed”; that is, as I said, very laborious and requires a good deal of travel up the Bridge before the person would be satisfied that s/he was “being fixed”. The odds of that person losing patience and demanding a refund are pretty high.
It is my current opinion as a C/S that a person who comes to auditing to get “fixed” should not be put on the Bridge per se. S/He should be given a Purif, a Happiness Rundown, and a full, thorough Life Repair before going near the rest of the Bridge. That Life Repair could take as much as 24 intensives (yes, I said intensives) before the Life Repair could be considered a success.
Another thing is that tolerance for homosexuality and homosexuals is still not a global phenomena. If one were trying to open an Ideal Org in Medina, and it were known that Scientology welcomed or even tolerated homosexuals, there’s good odds that permission from the local government to build a Medina Ideal Org would be denied. In other words, geographic limitations on where homosexuality is tolerated would limit church expansion.
And then, of course, is Miscavige’s rabid flaming homophobia, which creates a cognitive dissonance in him the size of the Andromeda Galaxy. I’m pretty sure that in the Mind of Miscavige, there’s an obsessive desire not to provide yet another piece of proof that Scientology’s results are questionable. If John “came out”, even the mildest of skeptics would ask, “If Scientology gets rid of aberrations, why is Travolta still gay?”
In such situations, I take solace in AXIOM 31: GOODNESS AND BADNESS, BEAUTIFULNESS AND UGLINESS, ARE ALIKE CONSIDERATIONS AND HAVE NO OTHER BASIS THAN OPINION.
If the person isn’t “fixated” into his homosexuality, the overall odds of him being helped with Scientology are much better.
A homosexual person has a much better chance of achieving case gain from an independent professional field auditor than s/he would in the church. The field auditor focuses on helping the preclear as s/he wants to be helped and not on some other intention for the benefit of an organization.
The auditor and preclear must be cautious to not get into a situation of what LRH called “tacit consent” or mutual withholds on any subject.
At the same time, the preclear has to be aware that s/he will only get case gain if they are completely open and honest with their auditor. This is the technical reason that people with high-security government clearances are banned from auditing.
The auditor has to make it safe for the pc to say anything and discuss anything in order for auditing to occur. Furthermore, the pc has to realize that any charged area has to be relieved of charge in order for the pc to lead a happier and more productive life. If the person has charge on being homosexual or having to hide that s/he is homosexual, relieving that charge through skilled auditing will allow the person to be who they really are and let them live confidently in whatever lifestyle they choose.
Possibly Helpful Advice of the Week
If you’re gay you don’t need to be afraid of an independent field auditor deliberately making you straight.
Make sure your independent field auditor has no agenda with you being gay.
Of course, that will mean that you’re straightforward with your independent field auditor about being gay.
But, unlike in the church, you can be assured that your independently-audited session records will be kept private and not made available to fifty staff personnel and someday show up on the internet.
— written by Plain Old Thetan