The NY Post has jumped on the I hate Scientology bandwagon and have published part of an interview they did with Jenna Hill Miscavige who is the niece of the Grand Poohbah himself.
Jenna came out last month and publicly supported Andrew Morton's book as it dealt with Scientology and immediately thereafter was basically crushed to non-existence by the Scientology folks. That is awful and if you want to read about it, click on the link above.
What I found fascinating is this. Jenna is currently 24 years old. In the year 2000 her parents left the church. You know a church must suck if the brother of the leader wants to leave. Jenna however decided to stay in the church. So, Jenna made this decision at say 16 or 17 years of age. Fine. The church put her in a boarding school. A Scientology boarding school. She stayed in the school until 2005 when she finally left the church. That means that even though she was 21 or 22 years of age she was still stuck in a boarding school. Obviously this is beyond high school, so what is it? Do they have a university or are they just using the opportunity to train their new leaders, or are they being probed by aliens? What are they doing?
While at the boarding school, Jenna was only allowed to see her parents once a year. This, despite the fact that for much of the time she was there she was over the age of 18. She also said that every day was uniform inspection day and that if you failed, that sometimes you would have a five gallon bucket of ice water dumped over your head. Again, this went on even though she was in her 20's.
"We were also required to write down all transgressions . . . similar to a sin in the Catholic religion. After writing them all down, we would receive a meter check on the Electropsychometer to make sure we weren't hiding anything, and you would have to keep writing until you came up clean. This is from the age of 5 until I was 12."
Presumably it stops at the age of 12 because even at that point the kids realize that the damn thing is just a toy hooked up to a bunch of wires and that they were basically scaring the kids into writing down all their sins. Now, unlike a priest who has no idea who said what for the most part, what do you think happens to all these things the kids write down? Jenna doesn't say, but what do you want to bet that Tom Cruise lays in bed at night and rubs them all over himself? OK, maybe not, but someone somewhere in the church is probably keeping these things and when the 10 year old boy starts making money in his 30's, the church comes knocking on his door for a little handout. If they don't get it, then ooops, everything released. Life ruined.
Really nice people these folks aren't they?
Don't even get me started about how they separated her from her parents when she was 12 because they were being a bad influence on her. Read Jenna's letter to the Scientologists here.
There oughta be a way the government can rid them of their "tax-free religion" status. Does any real religion charge money for their basic services?
ReplyDeleteI love her. Go Jenna!
ReplyDeleteWhen is this madness going to end?
ReplyDeleteScientology is a CULT. There really is no way to convince me otherwise.
I was discussing Scientology at work the other day and no one knew what I was talking about. THAT is scary.
Good for her for coming forward and speaking out.
@Mooshki:
ReplyDeleteMany religions may charge (compel through doctrinal ordinance) fees (tithes, offerings, donations) for "services” and yes, sometimes, even at a profit.
However, you are correct: the status of being considered a "religion" - while most agnostics may think it subjectively bestowed - is really a massive responsibility that shouldn't be given/taken lightly.
The real issues that our society (law, culture, public sentiment) must struggle with in deciding whether Scientology is a religion is its:
¢ singular absence of worship or devotions
¢ repulsion of any kind of outside critique (essential to the longevity of any religion)
¢ a philosophy that portells to give the path to enlightenment but then hordes that path as a "trade secret" (complete with Federal trademarks) and sells them.
This is the very definition of anti-religion. And I think you are right, Scientology® needs its tax-exempt status revoked.
There's a Scientology boarding school in Sheridan,Oregon calle The Delphian School-they have a website
ReplyDeleteNo contact with non-believers, huh?
ReplyDeleteGuess this explains why Nicole lives in Australia and rarely sees her kids. I wonder why she is mum about this, so to speak.
Also, has anyone heard about the internet hackers 'Anonymous' and how they plan to expose the Scientologists on Feb.10th? I only recently came to be aware of these guys and saw their warnings on Youtube. I can't figure out if they actually have dirt, or if they're just antagonizing those in Hubbord's Cupboard. Curious to see if anything comes of it.
I heard about those hackers "Anonymous" on World News Tonight. I think it was 2 weeks ago when they were talking about them. I might be wrong on the time line. Still kind of interesting if they were to do something about those weirdos LOL.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous scares me too..but i laughed at the video..a.lil but really i was shit scared.
ReplyDeleteany church that asks you for money is bad in my books. i'm looking at you Pope wearing Prada!
Jax, are you a Betty Bowers fan, perchance?
ReplyDeleteForget the tax-exempt status, how do people allow their children (minors in this case) to remain in the church and not be allowed to see them. I'm not yet a parent, but I'll be damned if anyone would be able to keep me away from my 16-year old. A 16 year-old is a MINOR and if I say her ass is not going to that church and is coming home with me, then that's the way it's gonna be. I just don't understand these parents (Like Nicole Kidman for one).
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAlso wanted to add, we bought a place about a year ago and for a while we were getting some Scientology brochures and stuff from the church addressed to the previous tenants. Apparently they'd moved without telling the church. A few months later, 2 people showed up at our doorstep looking for them. That was scary. I doubt the Catholic church would send people out to your house if you stop going to church. This is a cult, I don't care what Tom Cruise, J Lo or the government says.
ReplyDeletepwc - I know all churches "charge" in their own way, but, for example, a tithe asks for 10% of your income, and Scientology asks for set dollar amounts. They exclude poor people, and that seems like grounds to change their status. Unfortunately, with all the lawyers they have, they can easily double-talk themselves out of any of your or my criterion. I guess you have to use the "porn" criteria when labeling them a cult - "I know it when I see it."
ReplyDeleteJW's do the same sort of thing I think. A bunch of old guys sit down young girls and make them talk sex and all, and it is just pretty pervy. Who is crazier, JW's, Scientologists, or people who still think the Earth is flat?
ReplyDeleteAnyone?
In crazy order:
ReplyDelete#1 JWs ('cause they believe what they're selling)
#2 Scientologists
#3 Flatearthers. (Sherri Shepherd doesn't seem that crazy to me.)
p.s. I'd call Scientologists more evil than crazy, 'cause they're so calculating about everything.
ReplyDeleteI just read a book by Martha Beck called, "Leaving the Saints" which is about Mormons. Apparently they're just as cultish and they have a high rate of incest in their church. Sick.
ReplyDeleteoddly, it sounds like Oprah modeled her school after this place. I sometimes wonder if O is a closet Sci
ReplyDelete@kat -- I had read that some people are so desperate to have their emeters clear them, that they would make stuff up to get that damn needle to show them as "clean". That "stuff" is used to blackmail you.
ReplyDeleteone of the reasons they keep their tax exempt status (and other things) is they plant church members in the IRS, CIA, FBI, in very high places. they gather dirt on higher ups, and/or plant it, so that they have control.
ReplyDeleteits really scary.
I think the only way that the Cult of Scientology can be revoked of their tax status is if all the victims rise up and complain to the government that they never got refunds. COS is not the type who'd give money *away*, except perhaps to their Scientology fronts: Narcanon (where exercise and vitamins is their treatment), Citizen Commission on Human Rights (anti-psychiatry group, not to be confused with the Human Rights Commission), and other questionable "charities".
ReplyDeleteIf you want to know about Scientology, Google "LYMAN FAMILY"
ReplyDeleteMel Lyman (born March 24, 1938, Eureka, California — died 1978, exact date and location unknown) was an American cult leader and musician.
ReplyDeleteContents [hide]
1 Musician
2 The Mel Lyman Family
3 Decline of the Family, and Lyman's death
4 Publications
5 Discography
6 Notes
7 References
8 External links
[edit] Musician
“ Mel Lyman played harmonica like no one under the sun / Mel Lyman didn't just play harmonica, he was one. - Landis MacKellar[1] ”
Lyman grew up in California and Oregon. Following some itinerant traveling he joined Jim Kweskin's Boston-based jug band in 1963 as a banjo and harmonica player.
Lyman, a skilled harmonica player, is remembered in folk music circles for playing a long solo at the end of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival to the riled crowd streaming out after Bob Dylan's famous appearance with an electric band. Some felt that Lyman, an acoustic music purist, was delivering a wordless counterargument to Dylan's new-found rock direction.
[edit] The Mel Lyman Family
After moving to Boston, Lyman became involved with Timothy Leary's group of LSD enthusiasts and ingested large quantities of the drug. At some point, Lyman began to think of himself as destined for a role as a spiritual force and leader.
“ I am singing America to you and it is Mel Lyman. He is the new soul of the world. - Jim Kweskin[2] ”
Lyman was by all accounts very charismatic, and he soon began to gather acolytes, including Kweskin. Lyman founded and headed the Mel Lyman Family, centered in a few houses in the Fort Hill section of Roxbury, a poor neighborhood of Boston. The Family combined some of the outward forms of an urban hippie commune with a religio-political structure centered on Lyman.
In 1967, the Family gained control (apparently using strong-arm tactics) of the Avatar, a Boston underground newspaper. Later they founded their own short-lived paper, American Avatar. Lyman's writings in these publications brought him his first significant public notoriety, particularly as Lyman at various times claimed to be: the living embodiment of Truth, the greatest man in the world, Jesus Christ, and an alien entity sent to Earth in human form by extraterrestrials. Such pronouncements were typically delivered with extreme fervor and liberal use of the caps lock key.
“ Love is something you BECOME after there is no more YOU... through complete sacrifice of the personality... - Mel Lyman[3] ”
Because Lyman and the Family were seen to be part of the burgeoning Boston hippie community, they were able to attract recruits from amongst the many, mostly young, people in pursuit of an alternative lifestyle at that time.
But although Lyman and the Family shared some attributes with the hippies — use of LSD, fairly unconventional sexual mores, and Lyman's cosmic millennialism — they were not hippies in appearance or beliefs. Rather than the gentle and collectivist hippie ethic, Lyman espoused a philosophy that contained, among other things, strong currents of megalomania and nihilism.
“ I am going to burn down the world / I am going to tear down everything that cannot stand alone / I am going to shove hope up your ass / I am going to turn ideals to shit / I am going to reduce everything that stands to rubble / and then I am going to burn the rubble / and then I am going to scatter the ashes / and then maybe someone will be able to see something as it really is / Watch Out - Mel Lyman[4] ”
[edit] Decline of the Family, and Lyman's death
In 1971, Rolling Stone magazine published an extensive and philippic cover exposé of the Family. The Rolling Stone report described an authoritarian and dysfunctional environment, including an elite "Karma Squad" of ultra-loyalists to enforce Lyman's discipline, and isolation rooms for disobedient Family members. Family members disputed these reports.
“ The only difference between us and the Manson Family is that we don't go around preaching peace and love and we haven't killed anyone, yet. - Jim Kweskin (perhaps in jest)[4] ”
The Rolling Stone article and the earlier trial of Charles Manson, who seemed to share some traits in common with Lyman, raised the Family's profile and — whether fairly or not — established Lyman in the public mind as a bizarre and possibly dangerous person.
But although Lyman admired Charles Manson and corresponded with him, and was followed as a Messiah-like figure by the Family, it would be inaccurate to overstate the similarities between the Manson Family and the Mel Lyman Family. Lyman's group was larger and more stable and productive than Manson's. Unlike Manson's group, Lyman's included many persons of accomplishment and note, such as Kweskin, the actor Mark Frechette, and the writer Paul Williams. And although the Family was often accused of strong-arm tactics in dealing with neighbors and alternative-community groups, they never killed anyone. Most importantly, Lyman himself never manifested homicidal intent.
However, in 1973, members of the Family, including Frechette, staged a bank robbery. One member of the Family was killed by police, and Frechette died in a weightlifting accident in jail in 1975.
Thus, unlike Manson's Family, Lyman's did not explode in a dramatic denouement. Rather, the Family took a lower profile and carried on, but ceased recruiting. Lyman died in 1978, at only 39 or 40 years of age, under unknown (but presumably natural) circumstances.
“ [The Family] was a highly intolerant, manipulative, and frightening place to grow up... we were taught to believe that we were being protected from the World. - Guinevere Turner [5] ”
After Lyman's death, the Family evolved into a conventional commune — small, low-profile, and prosperous. The skills and work ethic honed in refurbishing the structures of the Family compound led to the founding of the profitable Fort Hill Construction Company, and The Family acquired property in Kansas and other places. Many Family members went on to successful careers, and all or almost all current members still revere Lyman, as do many former members, although other former Family members have disowned and attacked him.
Lyman had become involved with Jesse Benton, a talented singer and
ReplyDeletethe daughter of the painter Thomas Hart Benton. They bought some
property in the Fort Hill section of Boston with a commanding view of
the city, and as others joined them, a community began taking shape.
The Fort Hill group helped to found Boston's first underground
newspaper, Avatar, which spread Lyman's teachings ? including the
notion that folk music was a gift from God that had to be preserved
and nurtured ? within the counterculture.
"Because," Mrs. Benton Lyman says, "they made a fortune doing the
same thing with Charles Manson, and they equated us with the Manson
Family and wanted to sell that many newspapers again, and most of it
was libel and we should have sued them but we passed on the whole
thing."
The Boston Phoenix, Section Two, July 16, 1985 by Michael Matza We
still are family: The Lymans of Fort Hill then and now ...The winter
of '71 brought those devastating back-to-back issues of Rolling
Stone, in which copy editor David Felton presented a scathing,
exhaustively unflattering picture of Lyman family life. His damning
bill of particulars drew on the comments of ex-family members who
told him they had had to sneak away from the group to get free of its
awful grip, and on his own observations during visits to family homes
on both coasts. Among other pointed allegations, the Rolling Stone
articles suggested that Lyman had become something of a deranged
master to a bunch of stoned-out zombies - the malleable lost souls of
a lost generation, who gravitated to the family and were easily
exploited in its name. The articles strongly suggested that there was
no freedom of thought on the Hill and that Lyman kept his flock under
control through strategic administrations of hallucinogens and
through manipulative psychological games. The Rolling Stone pieces
were later reprinted in a book entitled Mindfuckers. Deservedly or
not, they spread the negative image of the family far and wide.
Thereafter, most of what was written or said about the Lyman family
was unflattering. Indeed, for anyone familiar with the Rolling Stone
charges it's impossible to meet the Fort Hill communards for the
first time - even as their guest at a lavish party in their
meticulously restored and opulently appointed home - without
wondering about the veracity of everything that came to be written
and said about them over the years. It's impossible not to wonder
about the authenticity of stories concerning the brutal "Karma
Squad," which is said to have roughed up members of the underground
press. Or stories of gun-toting bodyguards who protected Lyman's
privacy and did his bidding. Or stories about a windowless,
cinderblock basement vault, in which nonconforming members were
allegedly chained in order to encourage "self-awareness." Or all
those stories about ruthless self-government by LSD and intimidation.
It's impossible to meet the gentle, slightly spaced-out souls of the
Fort Hill Community today and not doubt the stories of yesteryear.
Yet it's possible, of course, that the family has changed
dramatically over the years and bears no resemblance to the group
that is said to have indulged in so many manipulative practices. In
any case, a couple of years ago, George Pepper had dinner with David
Felton at Pallson's, a Continental restaurant on New York's West
Side. At that meeting, says Pepper, Felton admitted that his articles
had been misguided and that he was on assignment to do a hatchet job.
But Felton remembers the meeting differently. "I stand by the
articles," he told the Phoenix recently. "I wasn't under assignment
to approach them in any way. When I had dinner with George, he was
trying to get me to repudiate [them] .... I did say that I was sorry
if people got their feelings hurt." The family had invited Felton
into its homes - and ended up feeling badly burned by what he wrote.
Thereafter, they guarded their privacy fiercely, opening up to one
another but rarely to the outside world. The public hostility and
internal traumas of the '70s had exacted a heavy toll, driving the
family into near-monastic seclusion.
The Kansas City Star, p.1B Thursday, March 27, 1986 Quiet survivors
from the 1960s: The Lyman Family sets own course on a Kansas farm
by Brian Burnes ... A few years later, in 1971, Rolling Stone
devoted two issues to a darker side of Lyman Family life. "Although
they didn't commit crimes like (Charles) Manson, they definitely took
advantage of people's vulnerability within the family," says David
Felton, author of the two stories. "Our only concern was that they
they were messing with people who were not in the family. Once the
story came out, they did retreat and stopped messing with people on
the outside world. " Members of the Lyman Family will not contest
that they withdrew. They say their children attending school in
Kansas were harassed after the articles. They also say the articles
were without foundation. If they were without foundation, why were
they printed? "Because," Mrs. Benton Lyman says, "they made a
fortune doing the same thing ith Charles Manson, and they equated us
with the Manson Family and wanted to sell that many newspapers again,
and most of it was libel and we should have sued them but we passed
on the whole thing."
"We'd go visit," says Maria Muldaur, "because Mel really had taught
us a lot and we loved him.... But the poeple who started surrounding
Mel were too rigid and just on too many trips.... They invited Geoff
to play on a session... and at a certain point he said, 'Hey, I love
Mel because he's a great guy, not because he's God.' I wasn't there,
but apparently a deadly hush fell over the thing, and the next thing
he knew he was 'out.' ... I think that Mel started out as a guy who
was truly looking for the truth and though he had found some
answers ... but the trip of him being worshiped corrupted his best
intentions.... It started being the 'inner circle' and the 'outer
peons,' and you couldn't get in to see Mel, and things got more and
more mysterious, and there were more and more slaves on the periphery
actually drilling with arms and so on."
I am a Mormon convert. We don't have horns, we don't hunt you down if you don't go (if you say no contact we don't go near you), we have total agency on our decisions and choices, no one is obligated to tithe ( it is a choice), no one is obligated to do what they do not want to do. As for incest?? That is a sad state of affairs the world over and certainly less in the Church than society as a whole, but not because someone is Mormon but because someone is sick and demented. We are not a religion that compels, but one that invites. You are free to refuse the invitation. The continuing misconceptions and outright lies continue to amaze me, but people who want to know the 'facts' and not the propoganda can certainly find it. Scientology is NOT a religion and they DO compel people to comply.
ReplyDelete