NEW YORK - SCIENTOLOGY IS GAY (BUT PRETENDING TO GIVE A SHIT ABOUT IT IS LAME TOO)

Did you see any of the big anti-Scientology protests this past weekend in Midtown and San Francisco and wherever else they were having their "Day of Action"? Talk about your nerd alerts. Entire blocks full of short guys in ill-fitting trenchcoats and tall guys with long hair tucked behind their ears and girls with awkward tits, all of them wearing those V for Vendetta masks (which you wouldn't think real nerds would be into considering the massive shit that movie took on the original comic, but whatever). We've never really understood the whole mass fascination with Scientology vs. other krazier kults (like Mungiki) and still aren't sure why all these demonstrations have suddenly been cropping up every other month, so we asked a friend of ours who briefly joined the church a few years ago to explain to us what the whole deal is. Here is the first part of what he told us (part two will go up later in the afternoon)...

The thing with the Church of Scientology is it's a shitty, criminal organization that wrecks people's lives and deserves whatever it's got coming so long as what's coming is punitive and bad. That said, there are a lot of cults out there that fit the same bill and a lot that are even worse to their members but get no attention in the mainstream press. Try googling "House of Yahweh" or "Apostolic Faith Church, Body of Jesus Christ Newborn" if you want some real creepfests.

The "protest movement" that's sprung up around Scientology in the past year or so is a completely disengenous joke. I'm sure there are a couple of people—probably the ones organizing the events—who have some real, vested interested in trying to take the church down, but the vast, vast majority of the folks showing up are only there because they want to be "part of something" and are only interested in the cult because it involves celebrities and funny-sounding space terms made up under the influence of heroin. The whole deal may as well be co-sponsored by Us Weekly and Babylon 5.

I was passing through Times Square on Saturday and stopped to ask a few of the protestors outside the church's main New York branch why they were there—did they have friends who got sucked into Scientology, family members, are they really against cults in general and go to pickets whenever NXIUM or Landmark Forums are in town? That sort of stuff. Maybe I just happened upon the biggest pack of retards in the throng, but one kid seriously described watching the Scientology episode of South Park to me as an "eye-opening moment" in his life. Another one said, "I got an email from a friend who was like, 'Dude, you have to come down to this,' so I grabbed my V mask and got the train." To give them their fair due, everyone I spoke with all knew a decent amount about the church and why it sucks, but none of them had any real reason for being there other than it was something to do and they didn't have work that day. It's basically a protest-themed flash mob.

Now, you're probably be saying, so what? So a bunch of nerds are protesting a bunch of other nerds who you admit are abominable—what's wrong with that? Well, for one thing it's counterproductive. Scientologists make up an estimated .02% of the US population, which is admittedly larger than a lot of cults, but still, less than a tenth the size of the Jehova's Witnesses in America (and they don't even let their kids celebrate CHRISTMAS). They're sitting on tons of money, a couple of actors, and Chick Corea, but otherwise their recruitment rates have been in freefall since the early 90s and unlike groups such as the Moonies, they have zero political clout outside their Floridian HQ in Clearwater (which hates them). At best they're a stagnant mess decades past its prime. No doubt a huge part of this can be attributed to the sudden availablity of their goofy-ass secrets on the internet, but when you plaster those secrets on a sign and yell them in the middle of the street it plays right into the church's carefully cultivated persecution complex.

It's like when the Klan or Aryan Nations or whoever announces that they're going to have a rally in Feetsboro, Tennessee, and all the punks and Food Not Bombs kids from nearby areas rush in to scream and throw bottles at the 10-15 pathetic old racists who wind up attending. While the kids may see it as "them and the townspeople taking a stand against fascism," the townspeople generally see it as "a bunch of scary kids with weird hair leaving garbage all over the town square" and it helps push those with latent sympathies for the racists to the fore.

To be continued...

STANTON X AS TOLD TO JEREMY GERNER

Comments

[..]

those V masks give me the worst douchebumps whenever I see people wear them at demos. Why not wear a Toga with a placard reading "I am Spartacus" while you're at it? So fucking corny.

[Dot]

There's too much back-story to the anti-Scientology ("Anonymous/4chan/Something Awful") protests anyways, e.g. why the masks, why the kids, why in 08, etc. You can pretty much sum it up as a bunch of kids on various message boards getting together to bring the Internet into the real world.

Oh, the humanity.

[boner]

yeah, fuck those Jehova's Witnesses. Lousy lays lousier laymen.

[oldfag]

you're doing it wrong.

you fucking kids, breaking rules 1 & 2... fuck. cancer.

[oldfag]

you're doing it wrong.

you fucking kids, breaking rules 1 & 2... fuck. cancer.

[Mac H.]

They were all over the block in Vancouver. They were all assholes except this adorable 8-year-old who was wearing a Jason-style hockey mask.

[will]

the thing is they don't even know what thet're protesting about. They say nothing about Scientology's stance psychiatry or the fact they target the mentally ill, poor, drug addicts of the world only to take their money in what they see as charity. I hate Scientology but i'd never join this stupid fucking protest. Typing this i realized the only way to type scientology without the spell checker spazzing out is with a capital. The fuckers are everywhere.

[thom]

Look, the real reason they are protesting Scientology is because of Youtube taking down a Tom Cruise video. That display of power over a widely popular website is what sparked the protests amongst the online community to begin with. I appreciate what Anonymous is doing and I think it is the right thing to do. As for the few individuals who weren't entirely educated on the issue, I'm pretty sure they were in the minority. Also, let us not forget that it is Scientology that forced certain former U.S. government officials to declare the cult as a religion, granting them tax exemption. Seems backwards to me, considering they are a "religion" based on a pyramid scheme.

[blowhards]

we all agree that scientologists are dicks, but the point is adopting such a serious cause as the Church's defrauding of its parishioners and coverup of the Lisa McPherson killing over something stupid like a youtube-copyright spat and making the whole thing seem like some internet fad helps further the Scientologists' sense of themselves as hapless religious martyrs and also steals thunder from the work of those who've been fighting the Church on legitimate grounds for the past 30 years.

[blowhards]

and they need that thunder, dammit.

[bollocks to scientology]

They may be only 0.2% of the population, but they own 50% of Hollywood.

I don't mean in a "the jews run Hollywood" way, but LITERALLY. There's a fucking street named after L.Ron Hubbard off H'wood blvd. The uniformed scientology tools drive around the celebrity center and block off parking spots with cones, as if they own the place.

FUCK those guys

[anon]

"The "protest movement" that's sprung up around Scientology in the past year or so is a completely disengenous joke."

It's supposed to be a joke you pretentious hipster faggots.

Anon is doing it for the lulz.

p.s. Jehovah's Witnesses are not a cult, they're just a fundamentalist Christian group. Do some research douche bag.

[JW]

hahaha, looks like the "pretentious hipster faggots" have got someone's goat up.

You can't put together reams of videos and comment threads justifying your actions, laying out a code of conduct, and psyching yourself up for "taking down the church" and "making the internet real, man" then take weekends out of your life to stand in a mask on a sidewalk screaming about xenu.net THEN claim you're just "doing it for the lulz."

You're contradicting yourself, because you know what everyone above has said is true. Fuck off back to 4chan you fucking loser.

[..]

"Jehovah's Witnesses are not a cult, they're just a fundamentalist Christian group. Do some research douche bag."

Errr, right, and Scientology's not a cult, it's just a streamlined interpretation of General Semantics with elements of Space Opera.

[Michael Cioffoletti]

How old are the editors writing your headlines?
I get irony, I helped re-invent it after the seventies were over.
You guys have given the words Gay, Scientology and Lame the same meaning or something.
Just really tired of seeing the word gay used to mean lame or uncool or stupid or whatever. However you think it's justifiable to throw the word around and misuse it, it just is not okay.
Gay still means gay, people still use it to identify themselves or others sexually and culturally so to use it in a negative, derogatory way is just bad for us Gays. Especially the ones who are young and just making the connection.
Like I'm a teen and maybe I'm gay so am I lame and stupid cause that's what everyone seems to think? Probably even me if I have been hearing the word and even using it myself in school all the years before I start to consider my sexuality.
It's just LAME.

[homo jenkins]

keep fighting the good fight, michael. you are up against basically the entire straight world and a sizable chunk of the gay one as well. and i say that as both a practicing homo and fagbasher.

[s]

Yeah, the thing that always bugged me about this Anon Scientology BS is how they always waffle between "We're serious about how bad Scientology is" and "Oh, we're just kidding" whenever someone calls them out. Only children, every last one of them. I guarantee it.

[oldfag]

4chan is past its prime, jumped the shark, and this kind of shit is exactly the cancer that has pretty much killed /b/ -- Yeah, I broke rules 1 and 2 but I don't think they fucking matter anymore because you guys are wasting your fucking time.

[Blame it on the Ramen]

Yeah, they had a couple of these "protests" in Montreal, too, where there's one tiny church and no real following. They had signs up like "Honk if you hate Scientology". Idiots.

[mike]

bosch,grien,the golden dawn,crow-lee, sexual warfare...the shakespeare squadren. god bless america (gas is expensive)

e nerd protesting nerds protesting other nerds. great

[Amiri Baraka]

lol

4chan went down the drain and nothing of value was lost.