Fair Game - More about

Jim Gatos asked a couple of good questions about my post, Answer to Comment on Fair Game. I answered the questions there, but I thought they are of general interest so I am also posting the questions and answers as a blog article:

Jim Said:
I can sympathize with how you must have felt, but may I ask;

1. Can you give us any clue as to what your offense was? If you'd rather not mention it that's fine, you and I and everyone has their right to privacy. Maybe you could tell us the type or catagory of offense you had, if you want to...

2. You must have felt upset about the "suppressive person" label. Logic would dictate that some folks would take the steps to get that label removed, and others would be quite upset and never admit they were wrong (if they were, in fact, wrong..).. How did you handle it?

PS.. I think EVERY religion has a "code of conduct"..., so I am not being negative at all, and I don't want anyone to think that...


My Answer

Excellent questions.

On #1, well ... I'd rather not go into details - don't want to embarrass myself any more than I already have :) Let's just say I was young and my solution to a problem was to run away from it rather than handle the mess I'd created. I think the category would be behavior that caused damage to the Church I was working at. Is it okay if I leave it at that?

On #2, strangely enough I was not upset about the "Suppressive Person" label. I had studied Scientology Ethics and I understood what it meant, that it wasn't a permanent label and I knew what to do about it. I also felt it was deserved. So, whilst I wasn't exactly over the moon about it, I wasn't upset.

The steps to handle a Suppressive Person declare are pretty simple. The detailed description takes a long page of a policy letter, so I'll give you the Reader's Digest version: stop doing bad stuff, publicly announce that you realize what you did wasn't good and what may have influenced you to act that way, pay off any debts you may have to Scientology churches, do some project to make up for what you did (the project must be clearly of benefit to mankind and can't involve Scientology) then start doing Scientology training starting at the lowest level.

That's all you have to do.

By the way, the things that can get you declared a "suppressive person" are called "suppressive acts" and they are listed in the book "Introduction To Scientology Ethics." So it's not like you get labeled just because someone gets pissed off at you or doesn't like you. You have to actually do stuff such as: Any felony (murder, arson, etc.), blackmail, using the mailing lists of Scientology organizations for personal profit or gain and there are quite a lot that are specifically concerned with the correct delivery of Scientology services and the spiritual technology of Scientology.

I guess people who read about "SP" on the Internet are not told that although the definition of Suppressive Person lists particular attributes of behavior, you only get officially labeled as a "SP" if you actually do something bad. Which is pretty much like it is in any group - you have to do something.

You also get a lot of chances to handle the situation. There is a thing called the "Ethics Gradient" which lists the steps that are taken to try and help a person handle his situation. The last step is #36 and that is "Expulsion from Scientology" which means you are expelled and declared a SP. And every expulsion has to go through several levels of the church before it is approved. So no one gets declared on a whim or without a lot of oversight and review.

And finally, Here is a quote from the policy letter written by L. Ron Hubbard that says how to handle a suppressive person:

"Civil court actions against SPs to effect collection of monies owed may be resorted to, as they are not entitled to Scientology ethics procedures."

That is all "Fair Game" every meant before it was canceled 40 years ago. Someone who had been expelled was not entitled to the protection of Scientology Ethics procedures. Nothing more and nothing less.

Well, I hope that answers it for you.

Apology to Jim Gatos

Jim is a reader of my blog and often posts great comments. Unfortunately my backlog of handling comment moderation caused me to not post or answer several of Jim's comments. Sorry Dude!!! As of right now I've posted and answered everything. So please continue making comments and giving me your excellent insights.

Scientology Blogosphere - Good Articles for the Week

There have been some really good articles on the Scientology Blogosphere this week:

• Drug Education Ads Win Silver Telly Award
  A drug education public service ad series from the Foundation for a Drug-Free World has been honored with two Silver Telly Awards, one for its "They Said/They Lied" series as Best Public Service Campaign and another going to a single ad of the series selected as Best Public Service Ad.
  
• Girl's Night Out
  A mother's article about her two daughters and how they are learning to think for themselves.
  
• Scientology Videos - Finding them
  It's easy to find the Scientology Video you want. They are all listed in one place.
  
• Expansion for Scientology in South Africa
  Church of Scientology has acquired the famous Johannesburg landmark, the Kyalami Castle, to be the home of its new advanced spiritual retreat. This marks a significant step for Scientologists who until now had to travel all the way to the U.S., Australia, Denmark or England for their higher spiritual progress.
  
• On the Radio!
  Monty is on the radio! "I liked it as I think that we are making an impact to those people out there that do not have a clue about the dangers of these drugs." And he'll be on this Sunday too, talking about the "Drug the Mothers Act," so listen in.
  
• Book: The Scalpel and the Soul
  L. Ron Hubbard said it over 50 years ago, and Scientologists know all about the phenomenon, but it's nice to have someone else come up with evidence from a completely different source.
  

These are just a few of the great articles you can see every day on the Scientology Blogosphere. The blogosphere is a collection of articles from blogs written by Scientologists from all over the world. It doesn't capture every blog by every Scientologist, but it has a lot of them.

Find out who Scientologists really are. Read the Scientology Blogosphere or subscribe to the Scientology Blogosphere RSS feed.

Fair Game Comment

jully made a comment regarding my article What is Fair Game?,

Here is my reply:

jully, You said you couldn't believe me because you'd read an alleged policy letter written in 1967. I can't comment on it because in 30 years of being in Scientology I've never seen this policy. I have the full set of the volumes that contain all Church policy written by L. Ron Hubbard and the "policy letter" you mention is not in there. I also have a single volume from the 1960's (I'm a bit of a collector) that contains a lot of old canceled policies many of which were not even written by Mr. Hubbard, but were published with his name on them. The policy you reference is also not in there.

You also refer to someone who you claim was "fair gamed" in the 1970s. I don't know who the person is and, as it was probably before I got into Scientology, I can't comment because in the 31 years I've been a Scientologist I've never ever seen any application of the nasty stuff that the anti-Scientology crew claim is being done all the time.

So we come back to "You say it is" versus "I say it isn't".

A couple of simple points in my favor:

If this "fair game" policy is in wide spread use as the anti-Scientology crew claim, then how come in 31 years I've never come across it? How come my son who was working in the Church's International management never heard of it? How come my daughter who worked in the ethics & justice department of a major Church never heard of it? How come my friend Patricia who was on staff at a major Church for ten years never heard of it? How come none of the friends I asked about it have ever heard of it? If it is such a broadly used and wide spread policy someone must have heard of it somewhere. Or is it so secret that none of the people who are supposedly following it know of its existence? Sorry, your claims just don't hold up under logical scrutiny. The truth is that "fair game" does not exist.

You also admit "I don't know much about Scientology". If you did know a little about Scientology and Scientologists you would know that the sort of behavior the anti-Scientology crew accuse us of is actually completely foreign to every tenet of the religion. I can't speak for every individual in Scientology but I can speak for myself, my family and my friends and I can say with absolute certainty that we follow the Way to Happiness, we apply the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and we obey the law - which has been a policy of Scientology from day one.

Scientology Videos - Telling Others

The new Scientology Video Channel has 3 hours worth of videos and a great menu structure to help you select which video you want to see. But sometimes you want to direct someone to a particular video so what do you do?

There are two solutions.

The first is to go the the video channel page, select the video and then click on "Share Video" just below the video screen. A form will pop up that you can use to email a link to a friend.

The second solution is to go to this page: Scientology Video Channel Site Map and select the video from the list.