Whitney & Bobbi Kristina

by Ian Halperin

  “Do you think it makes any sense?” I asked.

  “Sure. Absolutely,” she responded.

  “Well, that’s why I’m here, because I think my homosexuality is ruining my career. Is there any way to get over that?”

  “Possibly,” she replied matter-of-factly.

  I asked her how.

  “Through auditing,” she replied.

  “What’s auditing?” I asked.

  “Auditing is spiritual counseling.”

  Then the other shoe dropped. She suggested that I was ready for the “E-meter” test. I had come across this bizarre device during my research and was somewhat apprehensive. The E-meter, otherwise known as the electroencephaloneuromentimograph, was introduced by Hubbard in the 1950s as a supposedly simplified lie detector, designed to measure electrical changes in the skin while subjects discussed private and intimate moments from their past. Hubbard argued that unhappiness sprang from mental aberrations (or “engrams”) caused by early traumas. Counseling sessions with the E-meter, he claimed, could knock out the engrams, cure blindness, and even improve a person’s intelligence and appearance. The US Food and Drug Administration actually stepped in at one point and sued the church because of its claims concerning the effectiveness of the device.

  In his 1973 ruling on the matter, U.S. District Judge Gerhard Gesell called Scientology a “pseudo-science that has been adopted and adapted for religious purposes” and that Hubbard’s “quackery flourished throughout the United States and in various parts of the world.” Gesell declared:

  Hubbard and his fellow Scientologists developed the notion of using an E-meter to aid auditing. Substantial fees were charged for the meter. They repeatedly and explicitly represented that such auditing effectuated cures of many physical and mental illnesses. An individual processed with the aid of the E-meter was said to reach the intended goal of “clear” and was led to believe there was reliable scientific proof that once cleared many, indeed most, illnesses would automatically be cured. Auditing was guaranteed to be successful. All this was and is false—in short, a fraud. Contrary to representations made, there is absolutely no scientific or medical basis in fact for the claimed cures attributed to E-meter auditing.

  The judge ruled that (1) the church could no longer advertise its services as a scientific cure for disease, (2) must label the E-meters as ineffective in treating illnesses, and (3) could only use the E-meter in “bona fide religious counseling.”

  But even more controversially, the E-meter is often used for something Scientology allegedly calls the “sexual and criminal security check.” Given to members at different phases of their Scientology career, they are asked to hold on to the E-meter while they are asked questions about past criminal acts, crimes against Scientology, and sexual deeds or misdeeds. It is through this exercise, according to stories that have circulated for years from Scientology defectors, that the church garners embarrassing and incriminating information that can be used against members if they try to leave the church or reveal its secrets.

  Among the questions supposedly given to new members, known as preclears, are:

  • Have you ever raped anyone?

  • Have you ever been raped?

  • Have you ever been involved in an abortion?

  • Have you ever assisted in an abortion?

  • Have you ever committed bigamy?

  • Have you ever practiced cannibalism?

  • Have you ever practiced homosexuality?

  • Have you ever practiced or assisted intercourse between women?

  • Have you ever had intercourse with a member of your family?

  • Have you ever practiced sex with animals?

  • Have you ever killed or crippled animals for pleasure?

  • Have you ever practiced sodomy?

  • Do you collect sexual objects?

  • Have you ever had anything to do with pornography?

  • Have you practiced sex with children?

  • Have you ever used hypnotism to procure sex or money?

  • Have you ever used hypnotism to practice sex with children?

  • Have you ever been a prostitute?

  • Have you ever slept with a member of a race of another color?

  • Have you ever been a voyeur?

  • Have you ever had intercourse after placing another under alcohol or drugs?

  • Do you have any bastards?

  • Have you ever masturbated?

  Needless to say, I did not relish the idea of being hooked up to this device and possibly revealing my true intentions toward Scientology. But what was the worst they could do to me at this point?

  I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting as I was hooked up to the E-meter, but I definitely was not expecting anything as innocuous as the questions they asked me. My handler explained that if the needle on the device moves, it shows stress points, and that if it moves far enough to the right, it’s a “fail,” which indicates just how much I need Scientology.

  Then she asked the first question: “Is anything bothering you today?”

  Other than the prospect of being discovered as an undercover filmmaker and sent for “reeducation” by being forced to watch the John Travolta Scientology epic Battlefield Earth for hours with my eyeballs propped open, I didn’t have a care in the world. This became obvious when the needle on the E-meter failed to move. It just sat there, as if the machine were broken. The handler looked nervous as she waited and waited for something to happen, appearing to will the needle to go haywire. I suspected the lack of movement was unusual. We both just sat there, staring at the needle for what seemed like three minutes, until finally it moved a teensy bit to the right.

  “You see,” she practically shouts with glee, “that demonstrates a problem.”

  Then she asked the next question: “Are you nervous about something coming up in your life?” Again, we both waited as nothing happened. Again, she looked nervous, as though she was calculating how much money I wouldn’t be shelling out to them to fix my problems. Perhaps it was she who feared having to watch the Travolta film, supposedly based on one of Hubbard’s novels and on many critics’ lists as the worst movie ever made. Or perhaps there is an even worse punishment (though I couldn’t imagine how that’s possible); maybe some weird Hubbardian science-fiction torture meted out to Scientology tour guides who fail to meet their sucker quota.

  Again, the needle just barely moved. Again, she appeared gleeful, nodding her head in sympathy, as if she had just seen test results showing that I had terminal cancer.

  Then she asked me to “Think about something, anything in your life, and focus on it.”

  My mother had died not long before, so that was the obvious thing to focus on. And naturally, the needle jumped to the right, about an inch. This time the handler could barely contain her excitement; in fact, I think she may have had a tiny orgasm as she watched the needle jump.

  I told her I was focusing on my homosexuality and how much it was screwing up my acting career. I asked if their courses could help me overcome my “problem.”

  “Absolutely,” she declared. “We can definitely help you with that. You need auditing.” By this time, the results of my personality test had come back in the form of a computerized graph. Not surprisingly, considering that I answered most of the questions the opposite of how I really felt, they revealed that I had a few issues. She announced that I was stressed, depressed, insecure, emotionally fragile, and slightly unstable.

  “As I expected,” she said, “you are under severe emotional turmoil, but you do have potential. I think Scientology can definitely help you with that. We have courses that you will benefit from greatly. It will turn your life around.”

  Remembering Michael Pattinson and how much money he had doled out for these courses—at least $500,000 over twenty-five years—I tried to press her about how much it would cost and how long the courses usually take, but she was noncommittal. I was still waiting for her to ask me more q
uestions—perhaps to determine whether I was telling the truth about my sexuality—but, to my disappointment, and relief, she told me the test was over.

  I was actually somewhat surprised after all I had read that they didn’t probe into anything of a remotely personal nature while I was hooked up to the E-meter, but I supposed they save that for when you’re already reeled in.

  At least I assumed so, before I returned home and did a little further research.

  The origin of the idea that Scientology could “cure” homosexuality actually dates back to a 1951 booklet, published by the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation, entitled Dianetic Processing: A Brief Survey of Research Projects and Preliminary Results, providing the results of psychometric tests conducted on eighty-eight people undergoing Dianetics therapy. It presents case histories and a number of X-ray plates to support claims that Dianetics had cured “aberrations” including manic depression, asthma, arthritis, colitis, and “overt homosexuality.”

  The same year, in Hubbard’s Handbook for Preclears, he set out instructions for Dianeticists to “cure” homosexuality. After claiming that the cause of homosexuality was a fixation on a dominant parent of the opposite sex, he advised, “Break this life continuum concept by running sympathy and grief for the dominant parent and then run off the desires to be an effect and their failures and the homosexual is rehabilitated.”

  He also wrote Science of Survival, in which he called for drastic action to be taken against sexual perverts, whom he rated as “1.1 individuals.” Such people, he wrote, should be “taken from society as rapidly as possible and uniformly institutionalized.” One of the most effective measures a society threatened by war could take, he argued, would be “rounding up and placing in a cantonment, away from society, any 1.1 individual who might be connected to the government, the military or essential industry.” For such people, he reasoned, are “potential traitors, the very mode of operation of their insanity being betrayal.” On this level, he continued, are the “slime of society” such as sex criminals, political subversives, and people whose activities are merely the “devious writhings of secret hate.”

  It is pretty gruesome stuff, but I discovered that Hubbard had actually issued an edict in 1967 altering his previous extreme positions. “It has never been any part of my plans to regulate or to attempt to regulate the private lives of individuals,” he wrote. “Whenever this has occurred, it has not resulted in any improved condition . . . Therefore all former rules, regulations and policies relating to the sexual activities of Scientologists are cancelled.”

  Whether the edict was disingenuous is anybody’s guess, but, five years later, the church published How to Choose Your People, a book by Scientologist Ruth Minshull, which was copyrighted to Hubbard and given “issue authority” by the Scientology hierarchy, meaning it had all the weight and credibility of a papal edict. Scientology churches were selling the book alongside Hubbard’s own works until 1983. In the book, Minshull described “the gentle-mannered homosexual” as a classic example of the “subversive 1.1 personality.” She claimed gays were social misfits. Homosexuals, she wrote, don’t practice love because 1.1s can’t love. Their relationships, she explains, consist of “brief, sordid and impractical meetings” as well as longer “arrangements” punctuated by dramatic “tirades, discords, jealousies, and frequent infidelity.” Their love, she concludes, eventually turns to deep contempt.

  Minshull, however, did caution that homosexuals should not be abused or ridiculed. “But a society bent on survival must recognize any aberration as such and seek to raise people out of the low emotion that produces it.”

  It has actually long been rumored that the homophobic writings of Hubbard might have come from his own embarrassment over Quentin Hubbard, his gay son, who committed suicide in 1976.

  A few years ago, a Scientologist wrote a pamphlet entitled Straight Dope: About Gays and Scientology. The pamphlet claims that Hubbard abandoned whatever homophobia he once had and that the church’s dedication to human rights and clinics designed to fight drug and alcohol addiction should be supported by the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities. The pamphlet calls the accusations that the church is a homophobic cult the work of “hate groups” spreading lies. It also argues that the church’s refusal to take a position on gay rights issues is not a contradiction in its support of human rights.

  In 2002, the American Church of Scientology published a press release on its website quoting gay activist Keith Relkin as saying: “Over the years I have worked with the Church of Scientology for greater inclusion of gay people like me, and today represents a milestone in that progress.”

  In 2005, an article in Source (an official magazine published by the Church of Scientology) featured a gay man and his partner in a success story about their WISE consulting business.

  Is all this merely window dressing to disguise what really goes on behind the scenes with the church and gays? I still had no idea. I suppose that I could have taken a bunch of courses and eventually determined for myself whether they were trying to convert me, but I had neither the time, the money, nor the necessary dedication to my craft for the task.

  What I did conclude is that the Church of Scientology is no more homophobic than fundamentalist Christianity or Orthodox Judaism, both of which still regard homosexuality as an aberration. Like Scientology, elements of each of these religions have endorsed so-called conversion therapy, although Scientology appears unique in its apparent mission to focus on celebrities.

  But I digress.

  Although my experiences in Hollywood convinced me beyond any doubt that actors will go to extreme lengths to remain closeted and preserve their bankability, some have argued that those same constraints didn’t apply to Whitney to the same degree, because she was merely a singer.

  However, the cautionary tale of Clay Aiken convincingly demonstrates that the vinyl closet may be as pervasive as the celluloid variety.

  In 2003, the then twenty-four-year-old freckle-faced redhead burst onto the scene during the second season of American Idol, the hugely popular singing competition. Aiken ended up coming in second by a whisker to Ruben Studdard in the finale—a result that shocked many observers, because, by that point, he had already secured an enormous fan base that had taken to calling themselves “Clay Nation.” In the days before social media took off, Internet fan forums set the trends and Aiken had a massive following—an eclectic mix of Middle American tweens, grandmothers, and Christians who gushed at his boyish good looks and aw-shucks wholesome image.

  Even before the results were announced, Internet trolls regularly popped up in these forums to speculate on Aiken’s sexuality. Many were convinced that his slightly effeminate manner and singing style were signs that he was unmistakably gay. But as he professed his devotion to God and leaned hard on his bio of how he developed his mellifluous voice in the Baptist church choir where he sang every Sunday, Clay Nation savaged any such possibility.

  Gradually as the drumbeat of speculation grew louder, these fans would protest that it was none of anybody’s business and that they would love Clay even if he were gay. What does his sexuality have to do with his music? they trumpeted.

  Although Clay had placed second in the competition, his first recording efforts far surpassed Studdard’s own sales. His first album, Measure of a Man, debuted at number one on the Billboard charts in 2003, selling an astonishing 613,000 copies in its first week. It was the highest-selling debut album for a solo artist in more than a decade. His Clay Nation, in fact, was vaguely reminiscent of the “Belieber” phenomenon that made Justin Bieber a monster pop idol not long afterward.

  A year later, Aiken’s Christmas album, Merry Christmas with Love, became the best-selling holiday album ever released since Soundscan began tracking these numbers.

  When his album A Thousand Different Ways debuted at number two on the Billboard chart in September 2006, it made Aiken only the fourth recording artist in history ever to have his first three alb
ums debut in the top five and sell more than 200,000 copies in the first week.

  He was a genuine megastar even as the gay whispers intensified. As far back as July 2003, Rolling Stone featured the singer in a cover story in which he says, “One thing I’ve found of people in the public eye, either you’re a womanizer or you’ve got to be gay. Since I’m neither one of those, people are completely concerned about me.” As speculation grew, he was forced to repeatedly deny the rumors.

  “It doesn’t matter what I say. People are going to believe what they want,” he told People in 2006.

  Meanwhile, the whispers about his sexuality grew louder, especially after a Boston teacher revealed in 2006 that he had an exchange with Aiken on the gay chat site Manhunt.net. Blogger Perez Hilton posted the exchange between Aiken and the teacher on his popular website along with actual webcam photos. Suddenly Aiken’s secret was out.

  Soon after, while Aiken appeared on the talk show Live with Regis and Kelly, he was chastised by Kelly Ripa when he put his hand over her mouth, causing her to recoil and protest, “I don’t know where those hands have been, honey.” Rosie O’Donnell, by then out of the closet herself, accused Ripa of homophobia—an accusation that was seconded by another American Idol contestant, Katharine McPhee, who told People she believed that Ripa’s gesture was responding to Aiken’s perceived homosexuality. “She did. She kind of outed Clay,” McPhee said. “That’s his personal business that no one really knows.”

  Kelly then called in to Rosie on The View and protested that she was the only talk show host who didn’t question his sexuality. She merely didn’t want his hand over her mouth because it was “cold and flu season.” Rosie wasn’t buying the disingenuous explanation and stood by her accusation.

  In 2008, Aiken finally confirmed what just about everybody on the planet already knew when he appeared on the cover of People to confirm that he is indeed gay and had just had a baby through in vitro fertilization with his friend, producer Jaymes Foster.

  “I cannot raise a child to lie or to hide things,” he said, ignoring the fact that he had been lying to the public for five years. “I wasn’t raised that way, and I’m not going to raise a child to do that.”