Hollywood director deep-sixes Scientology

As reported by The Village Voice,  famous Hollywood director Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of our Fathers) has renounced a 35-year commitment to Scientology.  In a scathing — and long — letter written to the national spokesperson for Scientology (the letter appears in the Voice article), Haggis faults the organization for supporting Prop. 8, the anti-gay-marriage bill in California.

As you know, for ten months now I have been writing to ask you to make a public statement denouncing the actions of the Church of Scientology of San Diego. Their public sponsorship of Proposition 8, a hate-filled legislation that succeeded in taking away the civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens of California – rights that were granted them by the Supreme Court of our state – shames us.

I called and wrote and implored you, as the official spokesman of the church, to condemn their actions. I told you I could not, in good conscience, be a member of an organization where gay-bashing was tolerated.

In that first conversation, back at the end of October of last year, you told me you were horrified, that you would get to the bottom of it and “heads would roll.” You promised action. Ten months passed. No action was forthcoming. The best you offered was a weak and carefully worded press release, which praised the church’s human rights record and took no responsibility. Even that, you decided not to publish.

The church’s refusal to denounce the actions of these bigots, hypocrites and homophobes is cowardly. I can think of no other word. Silence is consent, Tommy. I refuse to consent.

There are other accusations of Church malfeasance as well. These won’t surprise anyone who’s followed the history of Scientology:

And though it may seem small by comparison, I was truly disturbed to see you provide private details from confessionals to the press in an attempt to embarrass and discredit the executives who spoke out. A priest would go to jail before revealing secrets from the confessional, no matter what the cost to himself or his church. That’s the kind of integrity I thought we had, but obviously the standard in this church is far lower – the public relations representative can reveal secrets to the press if the management feels justified. You even felt free to publish secrets from the confessional in Freedom Magazine – you just stopped short of labeling them as such, probably because you knew Scientologists would be horrified, knowing you so easily broke a sacred vow of trust with your parishioners.

How dare you use private information in order to label someone an “adulteress?” You took Amy Scobee’s most intimate admissions about her sexual life and passed them onto the press and then smeared them all over the pages your newsletter! I do not know the woman, but no matter what she said or did, this is the woman who joined the Sea Org at 16! She ran the entire celebrity center network, and was a loyal senior executive of the church for what, 20 years? You want to rebut her accusations, do it, and do it in the strongest terms possible – but that kind of character assassination is unconscionable.

My only question is why did it take him so long?  Although you may not consider Scientology a religion, it is classified as one by the government, and has all the trappings of a faith: a theology, supernatural beings, and the like. But if you read about the organization (not its own puffery), you’ll find that it doesn’t seem much of a force for good, although, like many conventional faiths, it does manage to squeeze a lot of bucks out of its adherents.  Do those who say we shouldn’t criticize religions include Scientology among them? After all, we can’t prove that Xenu doesn’t exist!