Scientology and Germany

Recent events have inderscored the meanness and inaccuracy of James Plummer's commentary on the Church of Scientology and President Clinton which soiled the pages of the Cavalier Daily earlier this year.

Plummer's self-indulgent exercise in sloppy research and bigotry contained a number of discredited rumors about the Scientology religion, its founder L. Ron Hubbard and the German government's campaign of discrimination against Scientologists. It also gleefully repeated offensive and ill-founded slurs against the Scientology religion itself.

In so doing, Mr. Plummer exhibited two failings which have become all too commonplace among both aspiring and professional journalists: (1) lazily repeating rumors started by other media organizations or sources without checking their veracity; and (2) promoting bigotry against an entire group of people based on the author's profound ignorance of the true purposes, activities and beliefs of that group.

For example, Plummer's column repeated the truly stupid and irresponsible speculation from George magazine that John Travolta got President Clinton to help the Church of Scientology in Germany in exchange for Travolta's softening his presidential portrayal in the movie Primary Colors.

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. The movie had been completed a full month before the President and John Travolta even spoke about Germany and even that was a short, off the cuff conversation.

Another example of bias and inexcusably shoddy research -- or perhaps more accurately no research at all -- was Mr. Plummer's attack on the professional writing credentials of Scientology founder, L. Ron Hubbard.

The fact is that Mr. Hubbard was a best selling author of both fiction and non-fiction, an accomplishment about which most writers can only dream. If Plummer had bothered to do a modicum of objective research, he would have discovered Mr. Hubbard's successes as they have been documented in papers like The New York Times. But Mr. Plummer didn't bother. He already "knew all about" Scientology.

The real truth here is that the State Department first carved out the U.S. position on German discrimination against Scientologists -- American citizens included -- in its 1993 Human Rights report (years before the book Primary Colors was even published) and has continued that criticism each year since. It has done so despite the public protests of German officials simply because the information presented to career State Department personnel has been compelling AND verifiable.

In Germany today, productive, law abiding Scientologists are routinely dismissed from jobs, dismissed from schools, dismissed from political parties, dismissed from social, business and political organizations, denied the right to professional licenses, denied the right to perform their art, denied the right to open bank accounts and obtain loans, denied the right to use public facilities and concert halls, blacklisted, boycotted, vilified, ostracized and threatened -- not because anything they have done -- but simply because of their personal beliefs.

The seriousness of this discrimination was highlighted on March 31st when a German appeals court granted a Scientologist a preliminary injuction prohibiting the government from enforcing an order denying her the right to run an employment agency. The Court held that the discriminatory decree issued by Federal Labor Minister Norbert Bluem against Scientologists was illegal and unconstitutional.

Within days of this court ruling, Swiss authorites arrested an agent for the German government for spying on the Church of Scientology in Switzerland, a distubing indication that the German government has illegally extended its discriminatory campaign against Scientologists beyond its own borders.

For the record, courts, government agencies and dozens of preeminent scholars in countries around the world have concluded after thorough and objective studies that Scientology is a religion. It is a religion that has provided a road to spiritual enlightenment and salvation to millions of people around the world. The chief religious activity in Scientology is pastoral counseling or "auditing" which is administerd by highly trained ministers and which actually raises an individual's awareness of himself as a spiritual being. This greatly raises an individual's personal integrity, self-respect and trust and eventually brings about an understanding of his or her personal relationship to God.

If you want to learn more about Scientology, visit our website at www.scientology.org or get one of Mr. Hubbard's books from a book store or library. Read it and make up your own mind.