See The Cat? See The Cradle?

So we visited the Scientology Center in New York today and took a tour from one of their reverends. When we walked in, we were immediately struck by the fact that everyone was walking around smiling. Naturally, we felt completely alienated.

We were shown promotional videos (lots of bright colors, soothing music, and ridiculously impossible imagery like minority children running through open fields of grass), and given a lecture. It was really something, certainly too much to describe here.

But we did ask our guide (who is relatively high up in the organization) about the Church’s policy on homosexuality. The marriage, the family, and procreation are very important to the religion. In addition, celebrities like Tom Cruise and John Travolta are often rumored to have joined the religion to curb those impulses, so it seemed like an obvious question. But our guide was stumped. It made us wonder whether the Pope ever says things like "I don't know." He stammered and said that Scientology didn’t really deal with sexuality.

We pressed the issue, and eventually got him to concede that while gays are allowed to join, if they WANT to stop liking men, the Church has WAYS of making that happen. In other words, they have a cure. Since Scientology techniques are all about improving your life, it follows that one such improvement would be ridding yourself of the handicap of loving members of your own sex.

We were, understandably outraged. Who did they think they were, discriminating against us just because of our sexual orientation? Thank goodness we also have Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, and Mormonism to fall back on.

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In case you were wondering, yes, we are already drinking.