Scientology: "Gays and Lesbians should be quarantined and institutionalized" : Indybay

As cities around the world prepare for their annual Pride celebrations, it is worth considering the "Church" of Scientology's official position on gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and queer people (LGBTQ). According to Scientology, such "perverts" should either be quarantined and institutionalized, or go through extensive Scientology "processing" until once again they have value as human beings. In the Scientology cult's most sacred text, "Dianetics," written in the early 1950s, a modern reader is somewhat startled to find this passage:

"The sexual pervert (and by this term Dianetics, to be brief, includes any and all forms of deviation in dynamic two [sexuality and procreation] such as homosexuality, lesbianism, sexual sadism, etc., and all down the catalog of Ellis and Krafft-Ebing) is actually quite ill physically." (L. Ron Hubbard, "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health")

The cult's founder, science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, felt LGBTQ people were malicious, untrustworthy and incredibly dangerous to society. In his follow-up book, "Science of Survival," he establishes a "tone scale," ranging from -3 to +4, for classifying categories of people and evaluating human behavior. "Perverts," as he classified LGBTQ people, fall at 1.1 on Hubbard's scale. He considered them to be extremely dangerous to society.

"At 1.1 on the tone scale we enter the area of the most vicious reversal of the second dynamic. Here we have promiscuity, perversion, sadism, and irregular practices…. People on this level on the second dynamic are intensely dangerous in the society, since aberration is contagious. A society which reaches this level is on its way out of history, as went the Greeks, as went the Romans, as goes modern European and American culture. Here is a flaming danger signal which must be heeded if a race is to go forward…. The person may claim to love others and to have the good of others as his foremost interest; yet, at the same moment, he works, unconsciously or otherwise, to injure or destroy the lives and reputations of people and also to destroy property… No social order which desires to survive dates overlook its stratum 1.1's. 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." (L. Ron Hubbard, "Science of Survival")

The only solution Hubbard envisions to this horrifying threat is essentially converting them back to "normalcy."

"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."

If this didn't work out, they were to be "disposed of quietly and without sorrow."

When Scientologists of today are questioned about these passages of what are considered to be Hubbard's two most "important" books (as well as similar passages highly unfavorable to people of African heritage), the response is invariably that Hubbard was a man of his times; in mainstream white American society of the 1950s such views might have been considered acceptable, if not commonly held. But this answer is just an evasion, in view of Scientology's belief in Hubbard's absolute infallibility – the cult views very harshly any attempt to suggest that Hubbard was not perfectly correct in everything he ever said or did. It is simply not permitted to change even one word of Hubbard's writings, and indeed, the two books cited above have kept these insane and homophobic passages, through all the subsequently printed editions.

Try asking a Scientologist, "Was Hubbard was wrong about this, yes or no?" You will not get an answer.

Scientology is much more than just a weird and wacky Hollywood fad, in which celebrities make fools of themselves and provide material for gossip magazines. Beyond its status as a "religion" in the USA, which it obtained through a secret deal with the Internal Revenue Service, and which give it extraordinary benefits not permitted to any other group, Scientology is also a multinational criminal racket. The average person would be shocked to learn the amount of influence Scientology wields, mostly due to blackmailing and intimidation of government officials. Scientology's primary goals are to "clear the planet" (of people like those at "tone 1.1") and to "obliterate" the mental health profession, replacing it with Scientology. They are prepared to do this by any means necessary, and are adept in using their many front groups to portray the cult as concerned humanitarians. The opposite is true. Indeed, according to L. Ron Hubbard, critics of Scientology are to be considered "fair game," and "[m]ay be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed." (L. Ron Hubbard, "HCOPL 18 October 67 Issue IV, Penalties for Lower Conditions").

Scientology: "Gays and Lesbians should be quarantined and institutionalized"

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