Proposition 8, the California initiative to ban marriage between same-sex couples, appeared on the ballot in 2008. Paul Haggis was deeply involved in fighting the initiative, marching in demonstrations and contributing financially. His advocacy placed a strain on his relationship with Scientology. For several years, he had been concerned about the bigotry he found inside the church, especially when it was directed at his two gay daughters. Katy, in particular, had expressed her discomfort with the way she was treated at the Celebrity Centre, where she had been taking some courses. She had decided to go to another Scientology mission where she wouldn’t feel so judged.
One evening, Paul and Deborah went to a small fund-raising dinner at John Travolta and Kelly Preston’s house. Deborah and Kelly were on the parents’ committee to raise funds for a new Delphi school in Santa Monica. Several other couples were there, all of them Operating Thetans. One of the guests referred to the waiter as a faggot.
It is difficult to imagine such open bigotry in Hollywood, a liberal stronghold, but especially in the home of John Travolta, who has dodged rumors of his sexual orientation since he first became a star. Despite the onslaught of publicity and sexual harassment suits that have been lodged against the star over the years, many Scientologists, including Haggis, believed that Travolta was not gay. Haggis had been impressed by his apparently loving relationship with his wife and children; but it is also common to assume that homosexuality is handled at the OT III level, where the body thetans that cause such problems can be audited away. The other diners may have been so convinced of Travolta’s sexual orientation that they felt free to display their prejudice. In any case, Travolta reprimanded his guest, saying that such remarks were not tolerated in their home.
Haggis was flooded with admiration for the firm but graceful way that the star had handled the situation. After the other guests had departed, Haggis and Travolta had a conversation in his small study. They talked about the bigotry they had observed in the church. Haggis confided that Katy had been made to feel unwanted at the Celebrity Centre. Travolta said that Hubbard’s writings had been misinterpreted, and he later provided some references that Katy could use to defend herself.
When Hubbard wrote Dianetics, in 1950, he reflected the prevailing social prejudices, including the psychiatric community, which considered homosexuality a mental illness. (It was not removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders until 1973.) “The sexual pervert”—by which Hubbard meant the homosexual—“is actually quite ill physically,” he writes. The following year, he published the Tone Scale in Science of Survival. Near the bottom, at 1.1 on the scale, is the Covertly Hostile personality. People in this state engage in casual sex, sadism—and homosexual activity. Hubbard describes this as “the most dangerous and wicked level.… Here is the person who smiles when he inserts a knife blade between your vertebrae.” “This is the level of the pervert, the hypocrite, the turncoat. This is the level of the subversive.… A 1.1 is the most dangerously insane person in society and is likely to cause the most damage.… Such people should be taken from the society as rapidly as possible and uniformly institutionalized.” Another way of dealing with them, he writes, is “to dispose of them quietly and without sorrow.” He went on: “The sudden and abrupt deletion of all individuals occupying the lower bands of the Tone Scale from the social order would result in an almost instant rise in the cultural tone and would interrupt the dwindling spiral into which any society may have entered.”
Hubbard occasionally moderated his stance, although he never entirely repudiated or discarded his prejudice. In 1952, he said, “Homosexuality is about as serious as sneezes.” In 1965, he refers in an executive letter to a “squirrel” who, he says, “was sacked for homosexuality and theft.” Another disaffected Scientologist, Hubbard notes in the same letter, “is a set-up for an arrest as a homosexual.” Two years later, when social attitudes toward gays were slowly changing, he declared, “It has never been any part of my plans to regulate or attempt to regulate the private lives of individuals.” However, because everything Hubbard wrote is sacrosanct in the church, these early views are indelibly fixed in the minds of many Scientologists. Long after the founder’s death it was still generally believed that auditing would “sort out” homosexuality. Gays in the church were frequently pressed to buy courses or take additional auditing in order to handle their condition.