This week, it’s answers about how Scientology “handles” people who are LGBT, moral injury, how disconnection is a strategic decision and more. Enjoy!

(1) If I understand correctly, Scientology does a bit of bait and switch in its treatment of gay people. When a gay person first walks in the door and starts doing introductory services, they are assured that it’s okay to be gay in Scientology. As they progress, however, they are told that their “condition” must be “handled”. But what kind of handling is implied here? Does Scientology have a gay conversion program in place? Or is the gay person simply expected to go back into the closet? Or become sexually inactive? Or something else altogether?

(2) I’m somewhat fascinated with the concept of moral injury lately. I think it’s very germane to current and former cult members. I think if someone leaving a cult doesn’t address their own moral injury, they can’t really heal. What I mean by it is that for the vast majority of people, doing something they know is wrong (even when they persuade themselves it’s ok), is traumatic. Like PTSD, it was first discussed regarding soldiers, but research is swiftly expanding to other groups. If someone commits an act they know is morally wrong and it doesn’t cause trauma, that’s most likely because they are a narcissist, sociopath, psychopath or otherwise have damaged empathy. So many people in cults have done things they knew were wrong at the time, but because of the cult, they rationalized it away. The Sea Org is entirely this, I think. And also, though I’m not a psychologist, I think it’s very possible that one reason Marty Rathbun turned out the way he has is because he didn’t thoroughly address his own moral injury. How could he have time, with what Scientology was doing to him? I think dealing with moral injury is central to dealing with cult trauma and often with abuse trauma generally. What do you think?

(3) Tommy Davis was secretly recorded saying to another Scientologist, who he was pressuring to disconnect from somebody, that “there’s a reason groups do this, it’s integral to their survival. Groups who don’t do it get destroyed. And it’s just been proven over and over and over again in Scientology’s 58-year history to whatever degree SPs scream about how horrible it is, bottom line, it is what works, it is what safeguards the Church”. This statement actually surprised me because it reveals that disconnection is understood within the Church of Scientology as a strategic policy to protect the organisation, rather than a purportedly ‘ethical’ practice to separate its members from harmful elements i.e. those defined as suppressive persons. What are your thoughts about this? Do most Scientologists view disconnection in this way, or is this notion of disconnection as strategy limited to the upper echelons of the Church of Scientology? And what other groups that practice disconnection might have Tommy Davis been referring to – religious groups? He can’t possibly have been knowingly drawing parallels between Scientology and other destructive cults, can he?

(4) Did Hubbard say that Xenu was a psychiatrist? Did his utter condemnation of psychiatrists and psychologists (and essentially anyone else who claimed to have something of value to say about the mind) begin with the mental health community’s flat out rejection of his pseudo-scientific therapy? I suppose I’m trying to see if that event was what motivated him to make them the antagonists in his newly birthed ideology. I realize so many people for so many decades have been trying to pierce the veil into the true motivations behind a man who cultivated so much mystique and misinformation about himself, and even after all the research done on the man behind the mystery research experts and ex-members whose experience is a form of expertise continue to come to varied conclusions as to why Ron did what he did. If you have any hypothesis or insight into this I’d love to hear it.

(5) Can you tell us why celebrities don’t show up on the list of high donors or get awards from the IAS? I would think that at least some of the celebs donate at the same levels as the other public donors and I would think that David Miscavige would want to show off their donations to the other members of the IAS. Is this a deliberate choice on the part of Scientology to keep their donations secret, or is this a choice on the part of the celebrity to opt out of receiving an award for their donation?