One of the most important things I take from my church is the idea of personal freedom and our rights as human beings, and that includes the right to date a man or a woman. Personal freedom is a very important concept in my religion, and I translate that to sexual orientation. If we’re all supposed to have the right to the life that we want to lead, then that should apply to the gay community. There isn’t really any dogma or scripture, yes or no, right or wrong on that particular subject in my church. It’s more open to personal interpretation, and that’s my interpretation.”Free-thinking Mad Men actress Elizabeth Moss, about the Church of Scientology’s stance on gays, in the Advocate.
Photos via Bravo
Mark
Which is why when they get a male gay celebrity the first thing the Scientologists do is assign a beard for them.
QJ201
She must be a lower level OT
Mary McConnell
What a bubble she lives in. If any member is actively practicing anything other than heterosexuality, they are barred from services, their only contact being the Ethics Officer, who has you work on changing your ‘lower ethics condition’ as deemed by the church.
The recently deceased Keith Relkin ( of ‘I’m Queer and I’m a Scientologist’ fame remained a third class citizen in Scientology because of his orientation and activities. All his efforts to enlighten the church and represent Scientology as pro-gay were thwarted long ago and he spent years kowtowing to the church in order to not be forced to disconnect from family and friend members in the church. Rest in peace Keith. Shame on the Church of Scientology for shielding their celebrity members from the raw truth that it is antipathetic in practice and belief to homosexuality and alternative sexual orientations.
Mary McConnell
Dare her to chat with film director Paul Haggis ansd watch what happens.
Matt
Damn, I really like her. I just got into Mad Men, and I love her character – particularly how she doesn’t cave to the pressure of her religious parents to attend church or practice the Roman Catholic faith. (Forgive me if this changes, I’m only finishing season 2.) Guess in real life, can’t say the same 🙁 And of all the religions, why this one?
Mike Barrett
It’s such a pity that Elizabeth hasn’t bothered to actually learn the teachings of the faux religion she belongs to. Just parroting what the multiple, criminally convicted cult of Scientology say in their press reports isn’t learning.
“There isn’t really any dogma or scripture, yes or no, right or wrong on that particular subject in my church”
YES THERE IS! I suspect you haven’t even bothered to lift a pampered finger of yours
and read ‘Science of Survival’, written by the criminally convicted conman L. Ron Hubbard. Go read that darlin’ and see what it has to say about homosexuality.
Scientology is anti-gay. It’s one of teh reasons Travolta is in such torment at the moment. That and his cult’s crazed anti-drug and PTS-SP stance having contributed to the denial of his son’s medical condition, leading to his ultimate death.
Harry
Hubbard’s own son Quentin was gay, and felt so much pressure from his super-controlling father that he killed himself at age 22. At the time, Quentin was one of the most advanced practitioners of Hubbard’s methods. Hubbard deemed homosexuality to be low on his “tone scale” and in the first years of Dianetics — in addition to being a cure for cancer, arthritis and blindness — it was also advertised as a cure for homosexuality.
Scientology has a double standard for celebrities. Recently former executive Debbie Cook, gave court testimony that she was humiliated in the “hole,” which is a prison camp. She was accused of being a lesbian. They made her stand in a garbage can and poured water over her. Paul Haggis’s gay daughter was teased and ostracized at clam school for being gay.
Moss needs to read a book about the history of Scientology. She has no conception about the lunacy of Hubbard, and the main purpose of this organization — which is to control people for the purpose of extracting money out of them.
Fitz
So she thinks that she is an alien trapped in a monkey’s body, waiting for her magic leader to come on a DC9 to remind her that she has super powers? Wow.. I respect her thought process so much.
Harry
Indeed, the cult found Preston for Travolta and matched them up. Members of their Sea Org are not allowed to be gay or have sexual relationships with members of the same sex. In general, they lie a lot and operate under a bait and switch. People are lured in believing they can discover what is true for themselves, but gradually they are expected to NEVER doubt Hubbard or the truth of his teachings, Xenu included. The Xenu story is not allegorical. Hubbard said it is factual, just as he wrote a book explaining how man evolved from the clam. This was one of his many of the idiotic things he claimed, through his “research,” i.e., imagination.
Harry
Sci-lebrities (Scientology Celebrities) live in a bubble world. As celebrities, they are used to people criticizing them for everything so they ignore outside criticism about the cult to which they belong. Scientology trains them to do this. Scilebrities attend special Scientology Celebrity Centers for “processing,” (to undergo the auditing process). They are assured these Celebrity Centers are for their privacy and protection, but really, they are there to stroke and pamper them, to make them feel they are elite among the elite.
Scilebrities could start by reading the Wiki on Hubbard and Scientology, then go to the main two books, Reitman’s “Inside Scientology” and Russell Miller’s “Barefaced Messiah,” the latter which is free in various formats on the web. The Miller book goes into some of the story of John McMaster, one of the first “clears,” whom Hubbard rejected when it came out McMaster was gay.
Christians don’t know much about Jesus because there are no historical records, but Hubbard is a well-documented fraud and liar. He pretended he was a “nuclear physicist” and “botanist,” an “authority on the mind” when in reality his personal life was often a disaster, and he destroyed people around him, spending his final years in isolation, not seeing his wife and children.
Travolta and Cruise both never finished high school, so they could pursue their acting careers. Paul Haggis, also uneducated (even though he’s an excellent writer and director), woke up, admitting that everyone outside knew he was in a cult, but he didn’t. He thought of it as a special club for supportive people who couldn’t find anything in conventional religion. Not only was there the gay issue for him, but he and his wife were “disconnected” from her parents, all because they stopped buying into the crock.
Stars need to be confronted with the abuse in Scientology, particularly the financial squeeze, and the indenturing of children into a life where slave for the cult, and rarely see their parents, because the parents are often brainwashed themselves, like Cruise, believing they are the only ones with answers, who can save the planet.
Hubbard spoke about being in control of the planet, and disposing quietly, without sorrow, of all low-toned elements, once the planet was clear.
Dan
She should read what Paul Haggis has to say about that:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_wright
Kirk
Damn, loved her but now so disappointed. I try to keep actors personal lives seperate from their professional expertise but Scientology is one thing I cannot help but finding creepy. This is why I prefer actors to keep their private lives private.
Fitz
My own armchair theory is that the cult is why people like Travolta and Cruise aren’t out. I think that they detailed so many sorted parts of their history to the “auditors” and fear being exposed if they put a toe out of line.
Harry
@Kirk: That’s what is unfortunate. Young people in particular sometimes look to TV or movie stars as role models. Most stars don’t want to be role models, but some do, like Cruise, because he would like the planet to be cleared of non-Scientologists. I have no doubt that Moss finds many things in Scientology that are helpful and supportive for her.
One reason why Scientology is helpful to stars but potentially harmful to others is that the financial drain is not a sacrifice. They never think what it must be like for members who gets “hooked,” virtually abandon their family, throw away their life savings, sometimes even take out loans, all to keep feeding their Scientology habit. Nothing about Scientology is free. A person is made to pay every step of the way. And when you run out of money you can work 100 work weeks in the Sea Org selling the scam or they discard you.
Seriously
When I was younger I read Dianetics and it explicitly stated that homosexuality was an illness, akin to the flu (in other words, something one could catch). I have heard that in recent years Dianetics has been edited to remove this, although I would wager the change was for political reasons (ie: don’t give the detractors anything they can grab on to). Still, Moss could have done herself a favor by googling the issue and learning a bit more before opening her mouth.
xamthor
Scientology will certainly accept money from the Homosexual… or “sexual pervert” as they call us on page 120 in Chapter 5 of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. They just don’t want us practicing same sex behavior.
It’s just the crazy cult version of “hate the sin love the sinner. “
She's Deluded
Lizzie, get your head out of your ass. The Cult that you promote is involved with illegal human trafficking, forced child labor (those Sea Org people you love signed a billion year contract at ages below 12), coerced abortions, fraud, heavy pushes for ‘donations’, and financial ruin of its parishioners(these are just the few crimes).
Lizzie, did you ever wonder WHY your ‘Church’ won’t let you read things about it on the Internet? If you had half a brain, you’d do some research and find out for yourself. You’ll be rather embarrassed when you realize that you’ve been promoting a con.
Eleanor
Here’s what Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, had to say. Bear in mind that Scientologists revere him and his literal words the way that hard-core born-agains do with Jesus.
“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”)
[Hubbard says that homosexuals and other “perverts” define “covert hostility,” at “point 1.1” on the “tone scale.”]
“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…. 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”)
Eleanor
Someone should show her those anti-gay passages and ask her if she agrees, yes or no. Guaranteed, she will not give a yes or no answer. It will be a weaselly, change-the-subject answer.
Bigg
It’s nice to see so many people refusing to fall for a Scientology ploy, but let’s not forget the real reason that Scientology is crap – because ALL religion is crap. There is no Santa, there is no Easter Bunny, and there is no Jesus/Allah/Brahma/L.Ron/MaryBakerEddy in the sky, and that makes religious belief a mental illness & all believers self-deluded AT BEST.
Franco
I guess I don’t understand it that much. I find that most Scientologists are gay-friendly, but like anything, there are wild exceptions. Let them be, who cares?
Dan
@Eleanor:
Here’s a link to the source for your quote, in case any readers doubt its veracity.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=16a6IZiAwIUC&lpg=PP1&vq=homosexuality&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=homosexuality&f=false
“The sexual pervert (… this term … includes any and all forms of deviation … such as homosexuality, lesbianism … ) is actually quite ill physically.”
(L. Ron Hubbard, _Dianetics_)
Pat Duffy
My ex was a Scientologist back in the early 80’s. They played a “bait-n-switch” telling him that Gays were OK then as he got more higher in the church they made him break up with me. A few yrs later I ran into him and he’d got himeself out and was then a member of MCC…
jellyfish
One of the Tenants or Policies of Scientology, Is its Acceptable to Lie to the public if it protects Its public image of Scientology.
if you haven’t noticed,Scientology Is extremely pathological in its Public Relations
Elizabeth Moss Is a Celebrity and she Is treated differently the the average Scientologist and some of the more shady rules practices are carefully sheltered from the Celebs especially for the more controversial stuff.
its a sure bet that when and If She reaches OT3
she believes the whole Xenu story…you cant Be a high level Nutter and pick and choose which Tenants you agree/disagree with.
when they say there Is no Xenu,Its a LIE they are trained to tell,Its to protect the image of Scientology.
As Tom Cruise said,Your either In or your out
somewhere Along the Bridge (Scientology term) she will have to accept the Homophobic rantings of the cult or quit, and become disconnected from Family still trapped.
Right now shes defiantly IN, so its play the party line. and play the Acceptable Truth game.
If and when she chooses to leave her story will be much different.
wayne
Ex-$cientologist Jason Beghe also said the ¢hurch is homophobic. When he got into a car accident they tried to blame the accident on a gay friend simply because this gay friend was gay. It’s an especially nutty brand of homophobia.
Mary McConnell
From Wikipedia Scientology and sexuality “Hubbard’s “tone scale”, a means of classifying individuals and human behaviour on a chart running from +40 (the most beneficial) to -40 (the least beneficial). Sexual perversion, a category in which he included homosexuality, was termed “covert hostility” and given a score of 1.1, “the level of the pervert, the hypocrite, the turncoat, … the subversive.” Such people were “skulking coward[s] who yet contain[] enough perfidious energy to strike back, but not enough courage ever to give warning.”
L. Ron Hubbard explains in the book Science of Survival: Prediction of Human Behavior’
how to handle “low-toned” people, including the homosexual. Fair Use Excerpt:
[..] The reasonable man quite ordinarily overlooks the fact that people from 2.0 down have no traffic with reason and cannot be reasoned with as one would reason with a 3.0. There are only two answers for the handling of people from 2.0 down on the tone scale , neither one of which has anything to do with reasoning with them or listening to their justification of their acts. The first is to raise them on the tone scale by un-enturbulating some of their theta by any one of the three valid processes .
The other is to dispose of them quietly and without sorrow. Adders are safe bedmates compared to people on the lower bands of the tone scale. Not all the beauty nor the handsomeness nor artificial social value nor property can atone for the vicious damage such people do to sane men and women.
The sudden and abrupt deletion of all individuals occupying the lower bands of the tone scale from the social order would result in an almost instant rise in the cultural tone and would interrupt the dwindling spiral into which any society may have entered. It is not necessary to produce a world of clears in order to have a reasonable and worthwhile social order; it is only necessary to delete those individuals who range from 2.0 down, either by processing them enough to get their tone level above the 2.0 line — a task which, indeed, is not very great, since the amount of processing in many cases might be under fifty hours, although it might also in others be in excess of two hundred — or simply quarantining them from the society. A Venezuelan dictator once decided to stop leprosy. He saw that most lepers in his country were also beggars. By the simple expedient of collecting and destroying all the beggars in Venezuela an end was put to leprosy in that country. [..]
Yeh, this is what scientologists believes.
Marc Abian
Apparently Ms. Moss has never read Dianetics, or she would be familiar with L. Ron Hubbard’s take on homosexuality, to whit:
“The sexual pervert (and by this term Dianetics, to be brief, includes any and all forms of deviation in dynamic two such as homosexuality, lesbianism [sic], sexual sadism, etc., and all down the catalog of Ellis and Krafft-Ebing) is actually quite ill physically.”
Marie Cohn
I cooked a Thanksgiving turkey for longer than her Scientology-approved marriage lasted.
Harry
@Bigg: Even so, some religions are more deceptive and more of a con than others, and Scientology is one of them.
Aside from Hubbard’s assigning gays to the bottom of the tone scale, he also slated such low-toned people for disposal, once Scientology was in control of all world governments. He also advocating smoking cigarettes to prevent cancer, at a time when there was a growing consensus in the medical community that smoking was a major cause of lung cancer.
Hubbard, with is “what is true for you, make it up as you go along” religion flip-flops constantly but their real level of delusion is visible on Cruise’s viral video, where he talks about them being the only ones who can help at a car accident and how he has brought “LRH tech” to over 1 billion people, nearly one sixth of the world’s population. There’s 40,000 of these nuts at most, and many people run from it after one course, but most after two years.
Sci-lebrities need to be challenged on the behavior, “solutions” and operation of Scientology. If Scientology bestows super powers, fine. Let’s see some super powers, other than being rich and stupid.
ILoveDebbieCook
What a lie!!! This cult is totally against gay & lesbians. Please people don’t believe her. If anything, you should be boycott this actress for spreading false information to the gay & lesbian community. One of their members (a man) was ordered to lick the bathroom floor clean with his tongue because they thought he was gay.
Please research Scientology’s crimes, OMG, you’ll be shocked!
dean fox
The church of scientology organisation is corrupt, corrupting and dangerous regardless of the beliefs of scientology, an opinion shared by an increasing circle of “independent scientologists” who’ve left the church of scientology but still believe in their interpretations of the writings of LRH.
The church of scientology under its ecclesiastical leader, David Miscavige, appears to have one top priority, getting money off its members. It doesn’t matter if the member is gay or not, although what has been said about the teachings of LRH is true.
In fact the church of scientology appears to have teamed up with the Nation of Islam, which I’m told is an another cult, and NoI members are told they should buy church of scientology services; I suspect the leaders of the NoI get a financial kick back. Funny how the pursuit of money overcomes so many apparent differences.
Celebrities are treated differently in most cases to regular members and are shielded from the abuses and corruption of the church of scientology. And for some reason most believe what the church of scientology tells them and does what it tells them to as well.
Only those ask questions like Paul Higgis, have problems.
dean fox
@Mike Barrett: She would have to read an early version of the science of survival, the latest one has been edited to refer simply to the sexually abberant and mention paedophiles(iirc). Certaintly the reference to homosexuals has been removed.
The removal of the written reference does not however change the views of the church of scientology supreme (dear) leader David Miscavige, who I’m told is prone to expressing his views most vigorously on all subjects with much invective, nor how this is reflected in how LGBT people are viewed by the church of scientology.
The idea that there’s no dogma is laughable too, you can’t have a church without dogma; all churches have a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. This is because all churches have leaders and followers who look to the leaders to tell them what to do.
Interestingly the rapidly increasing group of Independent Scientologists are finding they can get on with scientology without a leader telling them what it means and how to apply it. As an atheist this has me thinking, perhaps the world would be a better place without churches after all radicalised groups can’t form if there were no churches.
To be clear I don’t advocate banning churches, that’s just dumb, but the more people who realise churches are not necessary to following a life style philosophy, despite what the first 4 of the 10 commandments say, the better things might be.
wayne
@Marie Cohn: That’s right! Didn’t she marry that gay guy from SNL?
ILoveDebbieCook
This is what they do to you if they think you are a lesbian:
For the next twelve hours Debbie was made to stand in a large garbage can and face one hundred people screaming at her demanding a confession as to her “homosexual tendencies”. While this was going on, water was poured over her head. Signs were put around Debbie’s neck, one marked in magic marker “LESBO” while this torture proceeded. Debbie was repeatedly slapped across the face by other women in the room during the interrogation. Debbie never did break.
dean fox
@ILoveDebbieCook: the point you should take is the church of scientology encourages the “accusation” of being gay as a derogatory jibe.
This in as of itself demonstrates the strong homophobic nature within the church of scientology core.
It should be noted the “stars” are just endorsements and bank rolls, their treatment is completely different to those of regular Sea Org, staff or public members of the church of scientology.
The bizarre thing is they have this hierarchy where Seo Ord are elite, staff are cool and public are OK but in terms of treatment public are sources of money; staff are meant to extratct money from public for almost nothing and Sea Org are meant to make staff extract money for nearly nothing.
Only premadonna stars get special treatment so they promote the church of scientology and often give generously; that woman that does Bart Simpson voice gave few million $$ to the church as a donation.
Frankly these stars live in bubbles, they haVe no cliue and while they may be fun to watch you don’t wan’t to emulate them.
ILoveDebbieCook
If you want to read more about Debbie Cook and the horrors of the Church Of Scientology, check out Village Voice – Runnin Scared. In the link replace the dot in dot com.
http://blogs.villagevoicedotcom/runninscared/2012/01debbie_cook_scientology_enforcer_whistleblower_homophobia.php
Gigi
That’s total bullshit. Not true. I (used to) like Elizabeth but this is just too much.
ILoveDebbieCook
I am tired of people making excuses for Scientology celebrities, that they are not aware of the horrors, bullshit! They have computers, they know how to read and research.
Church of Scientology of San Diego. Their public sponsorship of Proposition 8, a hate-filled legislation that succeeded in taking away the civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens of California–rights that were granted them by the Supreme Court of our state–shames us.
Church founder, the science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, had written that gays should be “disposed of quietly and without sorrow.” Elizabeth Moss knows
that! Of course she’s going to deny it she needs the gay & lesbian community support for ratings.
James Peron
Has she never read the book by the founder of her cult: Dianetics? It was, and is, extremely anti-gay.
andyd
Yeah doesn’t she know that L Ron Hubbard said that gay people are 1.1 on the tone scale and that they should be ‘disposed of quietly and without sorrow’.Does she know what happened to LRH’s gay son,Quentin?
Lee
It’s amazing. People of many religious persuasions are anti-gay, yet many of you are picking on Scientologists, due to your own religious bigotry. You’re all fucking hypocrites.