Anonymous asked this question on 4/25/2000:

What is the Church of Scientology's perspective on gender roles in society? Thank you for your answer.

desertphile gave this response on 4/26/2000:

Hi. The Church of Scientology is very much egalitarian and rather equal in its treatment of men and women. A dollar is a dollar no matter who hands it over.

Unfortunately, its founder Lafayette Ronald Hubbard was grossly anti-female to an extent well beyond even the culture of the time (1950s to 1980s). He treated women horribly. Just horribly! It still makes me sick when I read parts of his diary and letters from his ex-wives and children.

Note: what follows is 100% factual, and supported by Hubbard's own accounts, and the accounts of the people involved. The members of the Church of Scientology either refuse to know about this, or do know and chose to lie about it and say it is not true. IT IS.

Hubbard's first wife managed to escape him and later divorced him. The divorce court judge ordered Hubbard to be evaluated by a psychologist because his wife described Hubbard's paranoia and schizophrenia--- a diagnosis Hubbard himself later agreed with, and begged help for on October 15, 1947 (the letter of which was filed on October 20 1947 at the Veterand's Administration).

Hubbard terrorized Sara Northup (Hubbard's second wife) and threatened to maim and kill her. One time he even woke her up in the middle of the night and had a knife against her eye and told her he could blind her in an instant--- just to see her reaction. As Ms. Northup later wrote to Paulette Cooper (another victim of the Church), Hubbard was "mad as a hatter." He once told her "Don't break your back scrubbing floors--- get yourself a nigger, that's what they were born for."

Hubbard married one wife without bothering to divorce the previous, so he was a bigamist.

In Hubbard's diary is where his mental illness really shows. He wrote about how he contracted gonorrhea from a whore during or shortly after the World War Two. That disease caused him considerable psyche damage, and he constantly feared what the disease had done to his "manhood."

In his diary (which he called "affirmations"), he wrote: "It gives me no displeasure to hear a virgin being raped. The lot of women is to be fornicated." Pretty disgusting.

He also wrote that western civilization and democracy was harmed when women were allowed to vote. Nice guy, eh?

What Hubbard did to his third wife was rather funny. He let her go to prison in his stead! Mary Sue Hubbard was made the head of the "Guardian's Office" (the Nazi-like SS branch of the Church of Scientology), so that when the FBI finally got around to addressing some of their crimes, she went to prison instead of Hubbard. Hubbard was in hiding at sea.

So we can at least be thankful that the Church of Scientology does not as a rule treat women like Hubbard did.

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