Angry Gay Pope vs $cientology

[onager]

The A.G.P. has tons of videos up, showing him pranking $cientologists. Usually around their Hollywood headquarters.

Here's a short teaser, with the A.G.P. doing some...interesting promotion for the HBO special "Going Clear" (which premiered last night). You can find lots more of his vids on YouTube...much to the aggravation of Co$, I'm sure.

And yes, $cientology really DOES have armed guards patrolling its Hollywood properties. Not sure if that's mostly to keep the inmates in, or curious people out. It makes the neighborhood look sort of like North Korea, with (slightly) better architecture and palm trees:

https://m.

[onager]

1. Follow-up - "The Apostate"

Here's the article that prompted the "Going Clear" documentary - Lawrence Wright's 2011 New Yorker profile of filmmaker Paul Haggis.

Haggis very publicly left the Co$ after it supported the anti-gay Proposition 8 in California. (Haggis has two gay daughters.)

Wright, thank No-God, is an old-fashioned, dig-to-the-source journalist who fact-checks everything. I lost track of the times in this one article that he caught the $cientologists lying outrageously.

Another thing that really struck me - how much $cientology, for all its "modern religion" claims, depends on the same tactics as the snake-handling Fundies - just BELIEVE! And don't question the leadership; only they know the real mind of L. Ron. Or God...

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/the-apostate-lawrence-wright

[LiberalAndProud]

2. "God wants me to have a cadillac."

God is good.

[onager]

5. And Tom Crooze needs customized motorcycles!

One of the weirdest and funniest parts of the article. The Church tore apart a couple of Cruise's motorcycles and rebuilt them with custom paint/chrome jobs.

Basically using slave...er, "free voluntary" labor provided by the Church.

That Wright article is very long, but well worth reading. For one thing, it explains how and why so many Hollywood types got into the cult.

The usual explanation in partly true - El Ron targeted celebrities for the publicity. But there was a much more direct connection, thru an acting studio run by a cult member.

For another thing, it's a chilling picture of how a one-time atheist (Haggis) gradually went further and further down the Co$ rabbit hole.

[LiberalAndProud]

6. It does make me wonder.

If I had "donated" the $20 for their psychological evaluation all those years ago, would I be a famous movie star today? Mourning missed opportunities.

[progressoid]

3. A friend of mine DVR'd it. No HBO here.

Hope to get to up to his place soon to see it.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. I watched some of the hbo doc and I don't get the outrage

what exactly is Scientology doing that the Vatican isn't?

[LiberalAndProud]

7. What's your point?

I've been outraged at the Vatican for years now.

[Warren Stupidity]

8. My point is that there is massively selective outrage - not here in this group

- but elsewhere on DU and in society in general. Scientology is doing what many religions do - farm their flock for as much rent as they can possibly extract while bamboozling them blind.

[LiberalAndProud]

9. ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1218189143#post186

'nuff said.

[beam me up scottie]

10. I've been told it's because Scientology is a 'made-up religion'.

I'm totally serious, btw.

[Warren Stupidity]

11. or because they TAKES MONEYS FROM PEOPLES!!@@!@@546%@!

[beam me up scottie]

12. And they make feel-good video propaganda that otherwise "discerning" people watch endlessly!

Try it, try being of service, Warren.

[PeaceNikki]

14. That one always gets me rofl'ing, too.

I point out the ridiculousness of the story of creation, Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, the virgin birth, the Resurrection, etc but they are blinded by the normalcy of that.

It's so weird.

[Warpy]

13. The Irish Catholic stuff I grew up with remains my yardstick

for judging religious nuttiness. The $cientologists don't come close, not yet, they're just an ordinary, garden variety, us-versus-them cult.

However, given Miscavige's paranoid style of leadership, give them a little more time and they'll be just about even.

In the meantime, HBO was able to do this because membership has declined sharply. They don't have as many rabid lawyers and enforcers as they used to, Miscagive seems to have alienated a good bit of the Sea Org.

There are also a couple of good BBC documentaries on You Tube now, the latter one with a disaffected Sea Org. member spilling a lot of guts.

[onager]

15. All true, but one fascinating thing to me...

$cientology is barely 50 years old, but is already headed down the path of all religions - with schisms, splits, heretics, etc.

e.g., there are groups of ex-$cientos who claim Hubbard's basic "tech" works, and they only want to study/apply that aspect. Without Miscavige and the hierarchy.

IMO, one reason for the decline in Co$ membership/influence - they were arrogant enough to try and take over the Internet, back when it first became popular in the 1990s.

At first they did that with their usual BS of filing lawsuits against anyone who posted their "copyrighted sacred writings." But every time they got the Sacred Writings removed from one server, they popped up again on 5 more. Usually in places like Dagestan, where US copyright law didn't apply.

One of the funniest incidents I remember - leaked e-mails from a Co$ lawyer, begging the Chinese government to take down the Sacred Writings. "I can't write Chinese but..."

Then there was The Netherlands, where Co$ made the huge mistake of attacking the biggest Dutch ISP, XS4all. And its very popular writer Karin Spaink.

When Co$ lost that case, its lawyers emerged into a chilly Amsterdam night...to see the Sacred Writings displayed on the sides of buildings, by pissed-off Dutch people with slide projectors.

[Warpy]

16. I used to talk to a guy in Dagestan in the 90s

and wondered what the hell he was doing at 6 AM his time, talking piffle to a US insomniac who was bored to death with network TV. Thanks for letting me know.

The Dutch bit is just too funny. I need to catch up on the Co$ stuff out there. Once I'd read their "sacred texts" about how they were all living in a sci fi story so preposterous old L. Ron could never get it published in a pulp magazine, I lost interest. I knew that outside of a few diehard fanatics, it was going to be toast a couple of generations after L. Ron kicked the bucket unless it lived on as DIY psychotherapy instead of a crackpot religion.

The Co$ lawsuits peaked in the early 90s and they didn't expect to win them, they expected to file enough of them to clog the courts and simply wear their perceived enemies down. It had worked that way with the IRS, who wanted nothing more than to have them go away for a while and were willing to lose the tax revenue rather than waste so much time on them.

However, once old Commodore L. Ron took the dirt nap, people smart enough to be lawyers and enforcers saw the pint sized Hitler Miscavige take over and knew there was no way they could continue to climb up the dungheap and they quit first. Now the rank and file are starting to wander off.

The blasphemers abandoning the hierarchy and silly Xenu story and reinventing it as DIY psychotherapy are the only bunch who have a chance of preserving any of it.