Sexuality in Three Ex-Scientology Narratives

chapter 17 Sexuality in Three Ex-Scientology Narratives Don Jolly Introduction Scientology, the mid-century religious movement founded by the pulp writer L. Ron Hubbard, presets its metaphysical arguments with rigid clarity. Its doctrine, internally referred to as technology or “tech”, overflows with maps, models and heuristic mechanisms designed to clearly delineate issues ranging from the proper method of interpersonal communication to the stages of the soul’s perfection. One of Hubbard’s models for morality concerns the “eight dynamics”, which religion scholar Hugh Urban describes as “the eight urges to survival” possessed by all human beings. (Urban 2011: 67). These include the urge for personal, material survival the urge for procreation and family life and the urge towards survival in the numinous – what Hubbard calls “the God Dy- namic”. The eight points of the Scientology cross represent one dynamic each, so central is their role in the tradition. The ultimate good, according to Hub- bard, is that which does “the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics” (Hubbard 2007: 101). It is interesting that the Second Dynamic (governing sex, reproduction and the family) has become the focus of several recent and high-profile narratives concerning ex-Scientologists’ break with the tradition. Going Clear, the best- selling 2013 history of the Church of Scientology written by journalist Law- rence Wright, organizes itself around the story of Paul Haggis, the screenwriter of 2004’s Oscar-nominated drama Crash along with many other successful films. Haggis publicly split with the Church in 2009 due to its treatment of gays and lesbians. Kate Bornstein, a prominent lgbtq1 activist, also focused on the Second Dynamic in her 2012 memoir A Queer and Pleasant Danger: The True Story of a Nice Jewish Boy Who Joins the Church of Scientology and Leaves Twelve Years Later To Become the Lovely Lady She Is Today, albeit in a different way. For Bornstein, gender identity is the central urge and struggle of living – it inspires her entrance into the Church, and produces the conditions of her exit. Finally, Beyond Belief, a 2013 memoir by Jenna Miscavige-Hill (assisted by writer Lisa Pulitzer) centers itself on its author’s desire for femininity and a settled family life. Both, she argues, are unattainable in Scientology. So, despite being raised in the tradition and leaving almost her entire family inside, Miscavige- Hill left the Church and, through her writing and activism, has encouraged © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��7 | doi �0.��63/978900433054�_0�9 <UN> 412 Jolly others to do the same. According to Hubbard’s model, all eight dynamics are roughly equal. According to this new wave of ex-Scientologists, such “ equality” catastrophically underserves the second. Miscavige-Hill makes this point di- rectly. Bornstein and Haggis support it implicitly. In all three of these popular and prominent accounts of life in Scientology, sexuality is depicted as the tradition’s fatal flaw. There are, of course, many difference between Hubbard’s second dynamic and the rhetoric of sexuality as deployed in a foucauldian sense. The latter is adopted as the theme of the present study for several reasons. First, I would argue that Hubbard’s model of sex, procreation and family life as one of the eight central urges of existence is, itself, part of the lineage of described by Foucault in his History of Sexuality. Second, the narratives of Haggis, Bornstein and Miscavige-Hill are stories concerning, but not centrally concerned with, Scientology doctrine. Each represents and works to “expose” the inner workings of Scientology for an audience of (presumably skeptical) non- Scientologists. This places each of them squarely in the larger discourse described by Foucault more than it does the sub-category of that discourse claimed by Hubbard. This study will work through the deployment of sexuality in Wright’s ac- count of Haggis’ departure and the memoirs of Bornstein and Miscavige-Hill, before offering Foucault the final word in regards to why, precisely, the second dynamic is so prominent in accounts of departure from the church. Paul Haggis, Lawrence Wright and the Political Sexuality The story of Paul Haggis’ Scientology career has been a favorite subject of Lawrence Wright since 2011, when his story “The Apostate” appeared in The New Yorker. Going Clear, Wright’s 2012 book on Scientology, is in many ways an expansion of “The Apostate” that encompasses the entire history of Hubbard’s movement, with Haggis’ narrative used as a personal hook and a primary orga- nizing element. Given the cultural prestige of The New Yorker, and the fantastic success of Going Clear (a documentary adaptation was produced by hbo in 2015) it is likely that Haggis’ journey into, and out of, Scientology will serve as the prototypical version of this narrative for some time. In Going Clear, Wright introduces Haggis at twenty-one, back in 1975. Haggis “thought of himself as ‘a loner and an artist and an iconoclast’”, Wright says, albeit one with limited personal options (Wright 2013: 7). Haggis’ “grades were too poor to get him into college”, the writer continues. The young man was “ready to change, but […] wasn’t sure how” (Wright 2013: 7). Into this personal void stepped another, slightly wild looking young man named Jim Logan, brandishing a copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics. “You have <UN>.

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