I met Frank when we both were going through the Purification Rundown. One day we stepped outside together to get fresh air. I asked Frank if he has a girlfriend. “No, I am gay. But, please, do not tell Tim about that. He hates people like me”, said Frank. Tim was also taking Purification; he believed that he was a woman in the past life. We talked about Tim for a while, then Frank suddenly changed the topic. He told me that he wants to become straight and asked my advice on Dianetics. “Dianetics auditing can change your sexual orientation”, I said. Frank did not have much of a money. I thought it would be a golden opportunity for me to improve my auditing skills. I offered Frank free auditing and he gladly accepted the offer. Luckily for him his work schedule changed after we completed the Purification, and we could not get together.

I was in Sea Org when I was taking an elevator ride with Bill Scrivers (I knew him as an assistant course supervisor when I was taking courses at ASHO Foundation). Suddenly the door opened and a pretty girl in Sea Org uniform walked in. I noticed right away that she did not have boobs, so I was not in a flirting mood. But Bill and three other men did not realize that, they all were looking at her with bedroom eyes. Bill moved close to the girl, his shoulder was touching hers. The elevator stopped. The girl walked out. There was a man standing in the corridor, he greeted the girl, “Hello John!” Bill was so embarrassed that he buried his face in his hands. I was making a Herculean effort to suppress the laughter.

The tone scale that I saw hanging on the class wall said nothing about homosexuality. I learned only 8 months ago that homosexuality is at the bottom of the expanded tone scale. Apparently, CoS do not advertise this kind of data because it is bad for business.

I was sitting on a bench near the ASHO Day Ethics Officer office waiting to see Master in Arms. Two men sitting next to me were telling each other how good it is to be gay and move up the Bridge. Obviously, they did not know what Hubbard wrote about homosexuality.

I just completed a basic Scientology course and was given opportunity to watch 2 Hubbard tapes. When Hubbard appeared on the screen and begun talking, the only thing I could think about was, “OMG, he looks and talks like gay!!”. I kept questioning myself if the Founder was gay -- he looked very feminine to me.

DLRH, Is this you talking from personal experience or are you quoting someone else here? I have never heard about this type of experience from an ex before. Could you expand on the topic please? Thanks!

Gumby,

Everything I described here is a personal experience.

The tone scale that I saw at CoS has the state of ‘apathy” at the bottom, if my memory is correct, there is no mentioning of homosexuality on it. Roughly 8 months ago I saw another tone scale at ESMB (I call it “expanded tone scale” although I do not know its correct title); that scale has “homosexuality” at the bottom. There was also discussion at that thread of homosexuality as the lowest human condition defined by Hubbard

I did not mind Hubbard being gay (my favorite philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, was gay), but I was totally unprepared to see what I observed on that Hubbard tape. I expected him to be something of a college professor delivering lecture in somewhat monotone voice. But there he was, very effeminate Hubbard who caught me by surprise. I was watching his mannerism without paying attention to the lecture. At times I was getting impression that Hubbard was gay who was doing his best to look macho. Perhaps, it was Hubbard’s charm offensive, but it looked weird to me.

I understand that not everyone is having similar impression while watching Hubbard tapes, so I would not go as far as saying that my observation proves that Hubbard was a homosexual.

Hubbard must have had a pretty weird personality anyway - being "gay" or "not gay" is probably somewhat irrelevant in comparison to other aspects of his personality/character.
"Affected mannerisms" are definitely not a privilege of "gay men" either, it's easy to be misled in that respect.

I'd be very curious though...
do you know what became of Frank? Did he decide to suppress his gay impulses for extended amounts of time, or did he turn away from Scientology in the end, or start a secret gay life next to being a "straight" Scientologist if that's possible at all?

Intellectually Hubbard realized he was a somewhat Gay, somewhat deranged slave master, but by attacking insanity (and the experts who diagnose it) and homosexuality while lauding freedom, he hoped to convince the world otherwise.

Regardless of outward appearances & behavior, we all know how Scientology views homosexuality. Mike Rinder had a big issue with my being gay, but figured I'd eventually get it handled with the tech. I never got any indication that LRH was gay; he hated gays. Just because one has feminine tendencies (back then, they were referred to as "mousie"), doesn't mean they have a same-sex orientation, but there definitely were gay & lesbian relationships occurring under the radar and people knew who they were, and quietly kept it to themselves.

Even though it was low on the tone scale & considered out-ethics, alot of shit happened under the radar, and gone unreported, because diligence, meeting production goals, and making our peers happy outweighed simple transgressions.

Behaviorists over the years have talked about people who had same-sex feelings & were bothered by it, only because society frowned down on it. Perhaps, if, back in the 60s & 70s, homosexuality was looked upon like many look at it today (except by the conservative Christians), LRH may not have assigned it low on the tone scale. Given that there have been closeted gay men, embarrassed by their feelings, that raged against homosexuality as a means of separating themselves from the same-sex orientation (i.e., gay politicians that have been outed), LRH may have, indeed, had a same-sex orientation.

His "hatred" and anger toward Quentin seemed more on Q's lack of aggressively pursuing the tech & production goals, than his same-sex orientation. Quentin was more laid back; Diana was the fireball.

Frank (Franko) was an Italian. He did not receive any Dianetics auditing. Year after our meeting he returned to Italy.

Thanks so much for your responses, this is really interesting!


This makes a lot of sense - it also conforms to my own experience that often the most outspoken homophobia is produced by people with strong but suppressed homophile impulses, especially in the repressive atmosphere of the 1970ies that I was still allowed to witness.



This is exactly what I meant before-I sometimes have a sense that this might run a lot deeper than it seems at first, but it's probably (almost) independent of any question of sexual orientation towards a specific gender.
There is indeed a dark/destructive side to sexuality that often gets bracketed out of contemporary discourse, something that is reflected and expressed for example in Aleister Crowley's/O.T.O.'s idea of "Sex Magick":
The exploitation of eroticized power shifts, sexualized devotion/dependency etc. "Love under Will" as Crowley called it.
Charles Manson is another example of this - and as it happens both of these characters are tangentially connected to Hubbard/Scientology.
(The reason why I've been compelled to think about these things is the recent movie "A dangerous method" about C.G.Jung, Sigmund Freud and Sabine Spielrein, which also talks about the demonic aspects of sexuality.)

I could imagine that a story like this one:

Could be framed as actually being the beginning of a sexuality-based relationship, in which the person who is audited out of his money and his sexual orietation is in fact experiencing this as an exciting/eroticized submission to a controlling power.
(Please know that I am not trying to insinuate that this is what happened between you and Frankie, but I am assuming conversations like this are generally one of the ways people become attracted/hooked into Scientology)

I think if Hubbard was "gay", this might be the pathway his sexual orientation became engrained in Scientology… through an eroticism of taking control vs. being controlled/transformed by control.
I generally don't like to frame everything in "sexuality" like Freud - all of this could also be called a "demonic" strategy to exploit human vulnerabilities.

But do you think it could be said that there is indeed a kinship between the Crowley's approach to "Sexual Magick", Hubbard's obsession with controlling his followers, Charles Manson's sexually addicted "family", and the phenomenon of eroticized power shift that can become an incredibly subversive force in exploitative hands?
(it could even be considered as a factor in the very darkest areas such as phenomena of pointless sadism that occured in nazi concentration camps.)

But again I am afraid to go off topic, as the contemporary concept of "gay and lesbian" is entirely orthogonal to this.
This might need it's own thread maybe, or maybe it does not.

sconetale,
The reason why Frank wanted to change his sexual orientation was his desire to return to Italy where homosexuals are treated badly. He did not want to be a pariah, the thought of not having friends and being rejected by the family was very frightening to him. He told me that if he were to stay in the USA, he would have no desire to become heterosexual.

Hey Demented, thanks for your reply. I'm sorry I dragged all this mess in.
There is a big difference between all this "polymorph-perverse" psycho stuff and the desire for a human partner no matter the gender.

How much of the idea that Auditing/Dianetics can change sexual orientation do you still think is true today?
Did you experience changes to your own life that were of a similar magnitude?

Hi sconetale,

Currently the causes of homosexuality are unknown, which means that sexual orientation cannot be changed, at least for now. There were attempts by various medical professionals and quacks to change it, but no one was successful.

Some researches suggest that homosexuality is a genetic condition, but I do not think it is true -- there is a well-known case of identical twins who were separated at birth, one of them is gay, the other one is straight.

There is another hypothesis that homosexuality is caused by improper parenting. This hypothesis makes sense to me. The problem with it is that no one seems to know what “poor parenting” is.

Dianetics is useless, it cannot change the mindset in general, left alone the homosexuality.

I had only one Dianetics session, it produced zero result (I described it at the thread Scientific Research Showing that Engrams Do Not Exist.)

dlrh,

You say "There is another hypothesis that homosexuality is caused by improper parenting. This hypothesis makes sense to me."
So, does the hypothesis discount every other species that demonstrates same-sex interaction?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual ... in_animals

As for hubbard?
He himself admits he was "taught to masturbate at a very young age". The guy obviously had severe hang-ups about his own perceived sexuality.

When I think of hubbard as a whole, I remember the film Tombstone where Wyatt(Kurt Russel) is talking to Doc(Val Kilmer) about why Jonny Ringo (Michael Biehn) is the way he is.

How can this hypothesis make sense to you when you can't even define "poor parenting"? Are you inferring (for example) that if your child is gay that you spanked them too often? too infrequently?

You can't "mother" or "father" your child into being gay or hetero. What you CAN do, as a good parent, is to always love, nurture, protect, and accept them for who they are, regardless of their sexual orientation. I think that would be the antithesis of "poor parenting", would it not?

Your reference to genetic studies of identical twins where one is gay and the other isn't (which I am taking your word at as actually existing because I am not going to research it) actually assists in disproving the "poor parenting" idea, does it not? (Assuming the twins in the studies were raised in the same home, of course.) There are, I would imagine, studies showing identical twins with the same sexual orientation, but those could, of course, be ignored where homophobic agendas exist. Studies, like statistics, can often be skewed to fit one's personal or professional (or religious) agenda.

I don't know if you mean it to be,but this is off-the-scale offensive as far as I'm concerned.
But that's probably a debate for elsewhere,not this board
And as Smurf mentioned earlier,there are plenty of guys who are effeminate/camp who are not gay or bisexual,and lots of gay and bi guys who are not effeminate or camp.

Huh?! Are you serious? You are being ironical, right? Otherwise, in my mind your credibility here has gone to zero.