**************
The following message was first sent to the list ivy-subscribers,
a private Internet list available to all who subscribe to the
(on paper) clearing tech magazine, International Viewpoints.
(see http://www.ivymag.org/ or write the editor: ivy@post8.tele.dk)
*************

From: PJSpickler@aol.com
Date: Thurs. 17 April 2003 21:47:02 EST
Subject: IVySubs: Cautionary tale for would-be and/or existing Scientology
fundamentalists
To: ivy-subscribers@lightlink.com


**   ivy-subscribers relaying   **


Good evening, friends --

    This is aimed at all those who wish to be, or already are, fundamentalist
Scientologists.  It is my opinion that becoming a fundamentalist
Scientologist does not serve L. Ron Hubbard or his memory very well, and I'll
tell you why I think that in a moment.  Take for example the missed withhold
controversy that has raged along the IVy list (just kidding) for some time
now.  Someone recently took a direct quote from a Hubbard Communications
Office Bulletin in which L. Ron Hubbard wrote, "All ARC breaks stem from
missed withholds."

    Now to a Scientology fundamentalist, that's the law, and if anything
proves to contradict it, that's unacceptable, and the contradiction must be
destroyed or invalidated so that the words of God, or L. Ron Hubbard, are an
absolute.  First and foremost, statements like that may be presumed to be
false, even if you were only to find in the whole history of the universe ONE
exception; because when L. Ron Hubbard wrote that, he was not able to examine
every ARC break that has ever existed in the history of the universe to be
certain that he had discovered a universal principle, an absolute.  However,
if Mr. Hubbard wished to say that SOME ARC breaks are caused by missed
withholds, he would be back in tune with the universe and all of its
possibilities, instead of trying to turn technical bulletins into Axioms.
HCOBs, in case you hadn't noticed, are NOT Axioms of Scientology.  They are
not self-evident truths, and it is possible to find exceptions to a fair
number, if not all of them, without damaging the credibility, the inventive
genius, and the best of L. Ron Hubbard.

    Ron himself has urged people, when he was in his right mind, to do their
best to separate his opinions from Scientology.  If you are being a
fundamentalist, you have no equipment with which to separate his opinions
from Scientology.  You must ask yourself before you commit yourself to
fundamentalism, "Has L. Ron Hubbard ever been wrong in a big way, a way that
is provable?"  The answer is Yes, he has been wrong, and in fact when he was
delivering the Service Facsimile lectures at St. Hill, England, in the summer
of 1963, he himself said (paraphrased), "A person's sanity depends on their
ability and willingness to be wrong."  He furthermore said, "Have you ever
had a more unpleasant experience than being around someone who always
insisted on being right?"

    So again I caution the fundamentalists to hearken to these words and
cease doing the disservice to L. Ron Hubbard of making him someone who always
must be right, even when he's wrong.

    And now I'll tell you just how wrong he once was.  The subject, which was
mentioned some years ago in another posting, had to do with the writings and
teachings and theories of L. Ron Hubbard on the subject of homosexuality.
These are to be found in _Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health_,
and in that which I call Book II, namely _Science of Survival_.  I hope you
read about it yourself, but I'll make an effort here to condense what I
remember of what he said.  He essentially said that the sexual urge or drive
is so strong and so basic that in order to pervert it or direct it into other
than heterosexual channels, that this could only be accomplished by the most
horrifying prenatal engrams that were aimed at the fetus, the forming body,
of the human being; and that it wasn't just one or two engrams, but many,
many efforts to harm and destroy this forming organism whilst also filling
,in the verbal sense ,these engrams with horrifying and ugly statements; and
that this and only this could be the cause of homosexuality.

    He further went on, in _Science of Survival_, to say that all homosexuals
are 1.1 on the Tone Scale, and a lot of other unkind and uncomplimentary
things about this perversion or inversion, as L. Ron Hubbard described it;
which put him on record with the worst theories of Sigmund Freud and another
Freud disciple by the name of Stekel on the subject of homosexuality.  All of
these worthies, including Mr. Hubbard, believed that homosexuality was a
mental illness, and that it could be cured with psychoanalysis or Dianetic
auditing.

    So it became very important or implicit that anyone who showed up at the
doors of Dianetics or Scientology should be made to believe that there was
something terribly wrong with them if they were homosexual, and by gosh and
by golly, with plenty of auditing, these poor, inverse and perverse people
could be cured of this terrible affliction.  Furthermore, in the latter days
of Ron Hubbard and his Church of Scientology, homosexuals who sought to enter
into a loving and sexual relationship with other homosexuals were to be
denied  auditing and/or training in the Church unless they agreed to cease
this terrible and sickening practice -- pretty much the same message that the
fundamentalist Christians, in their great and wondrous spirit of brotherhood,
put out to the gay and lesbian community.

    Anyhow, here's how wrong L. Ron Hubbard was.  One of Ron's sons, by the
name of Quentin Hubbard, a very nice, super-intelligent guy who I had known
practically since he was a baby, turned out to be  homosexual.  Well, this
threw Mr. Hubbard into quite a quandary, since that meant that he and Mary
Sue Hubbard had spent quite a bit of time while Mary Sue was pregnant with
the body that was going to be named Quentin Hubbard delivering horrible
engrams and terrible verbal things to this developing baby.  We certainly
don't believe for a minute, do we, that the founder of Dianetics could have
done this to one of his children??  Well, if he didn't, and no one else did
it, then how was it possible for Quentin Hubbard to become homosexual?

    Well, this is a long and tragic story, and eventually, to save his father
and mother terrible embarrassment that might have affected the inviolate
public image of Scientology and its founder, and to ease himself out of an
intolerable life in connection with his father, this poor victim finally took
his own life, committed suicide, followed by a great cover-up of the actual
story.

    So anyway, there's an example for any would-be or already existing
fundamentalist of just how wrong, just how fallible, just how possible it was
for Ron as a human being to be.  That doesn't mean that he's always wrong --
it just means he isn't always right, and until all you would-be
fundamentalists or existing ones put that datum concerning missed withholds
to the test, give the Old Man and his memory a break, and assume until all
cases are in that what he meant to say was, "Some ARC breaks  stem from
missed withholds."

    Brevity forbids me from continuing this opus any further.  Goodbye for
now, and best wishes --
    Phil