From braintree!news.sprintlink.net!in1.uu.net!nntp-xfer-2.csn.net!tali.UCHSC.edu!chris Thu Oct 5 10:54:22 1995 Path: braintree!news.sprintlink.net!in1.uu.net!nntp-xfer-2.csn.net!tali.UCHSC.edu!chris From: chris@eris.uchsc.edu (Chris Yoder) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,co.general Subject: Denver, CO Scientology sponsored Religious Freedom Ceremony. Date: 3 Oct 1995 16:24:11 GMT Organization: UCHSC Lines: 144 Message-ID: <44ro3b$f76@tali.UCHSC.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: eris.uchsc.edu X-SigEd: SigEd V1.3, Add .sig and PGP flexibility to posts. X-SigEd-URL: http://nyx10.cs.du.edu:8001/~pgregg/siged/ Xref: braintree alt.religion.scientology:113457 co.general:19181 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Thursday, September 28, 1995 the Church <spit> of Scientology sponsored a non-denominational religious ceremony celebrating religious freedom. It was held in veterans memorial park, just to the west of the colorado state capitol. I went, along with one other critic. We took flyers, and left some on windshields outside the capitol building. Here is the text of one of the flyers we used: - ---------------------------------- CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY DECLARES WAR ON FREEDOM. On August twenty third, the Church of Scientology smashed the protections offered by both the First and the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. In two simultaneous raids Scientologist officials accompanied by US Marshals smashed down the doors of two boulder county residents. Taking advantage of loopholes in the US copyright laws, Scientologists obtained federal warrants for the search and seizure of the contents of two boulder county homes. The homes were also the "home" of an electronic lending library. This library was allegedly what the Church of Scientology was after. Since then it has come to light that the Church of Scientology is not searching for electronic copyright violations, but for intelligence data about many of the people who are vocally and widely critical of the Church of Scientology’s practices. Most of these critics are not critical of the spiritual beliefs of the Church, only it's practices. What the Church of Scientology has done is the moral equivalent of the Catholic Church breaking down the doors of the Boulder Public Library looking for Luther’s Small Catechism, and ending up with the life history of every person who had ever checked a book out of the library. Keep in mind that the Catholics have never done this. In the past several months the Church of Scientology has done the same thing to its critics on both coasts of the US. The church has also filed a motion against the Washington Post, for essentially the same thing. The Church of Scientology is trying to silence the thundering printing presses that are so vital to the foundational freedoms sacred to everyone. Our protest is not over the fact that Scientologists believe that Xenu threw them into a volcano 75,000,000 years ago and then dropped nuclear bombs on them. It's not over the fact that they believe they are descended from Piltdown man. It's over the fact that they have attempted to remove alt.religion.scientology. It's over the fact that they have canceled thousands of posts that they did not like. It's over the raids of Dennis Erlich, Arnie Lerma, Larry Wollersheim, Bob Penny. It's about Paulette Cooper, Jon Atack, the Youngs, Susan Meister, the Taboyons, and the tens of thousands of other people who have had their lives destroyed by this cult. You might have heard that the Internet is part of this battle. The internet, as an uncensored medium, permits the free flow of debate between people with opposing viewpoints. Over 14,000 forums, called news groups, are established to debate virtually every topic imaginable. Socialists argue with militia members. Democrats argue with Republicans. Pro- choicers argue with Right to Lifers. Environmentalists argue with wise users. Some members of the cult would act to prevent that town square from including a place where cult critics and cult members could argue with each other. The news group called alt.religion.scientology, dedicated to the discussion of that cult, has been the subject of attempts to delete the entire forum. Specific messages that cult members took offense to were deleted through the use of forged cancel messages. Unauthorized deletion of files violates two separate federal statutes. They want to silence the critics by any means possible. The raids in Boulder, California, and Virginia are only part of this attempt to silence debate. Numerous people have gotten threatening letters from a cult attorney threatening litigation for quoting as little as 6 lines of their 'trade secret' scripture (have you ever heard of a RELIGION with trade secrets), scripture which now, according to Federal Judge Leoni Brinkema, has "escaped into the public domain". Anyone is entitled to freedom of religion. But with that freedom comes the right to question. That is not a right which anyone should have to give up in America at the whim of a fanatical cult's attorneys. It is not a right we are willing to give up. HOW TO GET MORE INFORMATION. If you have internet access, detailed documentation of this entire incident can be found at the WWW page http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/scientology/home.html and ongoing discussion can be joined in the Usenet News Group alt.religion.scientology. There are also many other WWW pages on this issue, and Ron Newman’s (above) contains links to them all. Some good books to try and find are: Bare-faced Messiah: The True Story of L Ron Hubbard by Russell Miller ISBN 0-8050-0654-0 or 0-7181-2764-1 (Penguin edition), or A Piece of Blue Sky: Scientology, Dianetics and L Ron Hubbard by Jon Atack ISBN 0-8184-0499-X. Both of these books should be in your local library, if they aren’t, think about it. Another excellent source of information on The Church of Scientology is the 5/6/91 Time Magazine cover story, see if your local library still has this one. - ------------------------------------------------ I won't use the other flyer without permission, just as I won't use the other critics name without permission. Some of the prestigious members of The Church of Scientology that were there included Heber Jentsch, Leisa Goodman, and maybe Helena Kobrin, but I'm not sure about Ms Kobrin. The infamous Deb Danos was there as well. From the public, there were members of other churchs, Catholic, and Buddism spring to mind, and a paid political hack from the City and County of Denver. It was an odd feeling, to say the least, to be there in the park surrounded by at least 50 people who consider me to be a suppresive person. I'm not saying that the Co$ has declared me suppressive, but as soon as they found out who we were, they became less than friendly. I did not see anyone that I recognized from normal life, which I am very thankful for. A media person was going to tape the ceremony, but was asked by the Dianeticists to stop, no reason given. The main things I noticed was a fairly subtle attack on psychiatry, saying that the church should be allowed to do mental health stuff, and mental health stuff should not be allowed without appropriate spiritual guidance. After that, I was getting way too tempted, and was way too out-numbered for my own good. So, the other critic and I blew. It was a very unnerving experience. ***************************************************************************** * Chris Yoder, SP3, KoX, Clam Snapper.* To find out what that means read ars* ***************************************************************************** * To find out about what the Scientologists are trying to do to the net * * WWW to the URL: http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/scientology/home.html * ***************************************************************************** [ For Public Key: finger chris@eris.uchsc.edu ] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMHFjXxL//ovcRxmBAQFTAwP/boUctIKBEvVvF8cEYvOeoKqFA2pNfVfN /H/o/BUdTbwqCAX2LVFftg+GLKWutw/0LuGcgli/1lut0CtaNd91EDEhejs6PXnr uB8kPeATU8HKN1iDImexQQfataJtSr7ATuQ1khCkUShkkt2KKcV2W04mLux3Uwfe uOLrLINszJ8= =najr -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ÿ