By Jerry Staton

When I was in kindergarten, there was a little girl in my class who would approach an individual pretending to admire their finger painting, and then, when that person was sufficiently distracted, she would plant her hand squarely in the middle of that person’s painting. Whenever someone would retaliate, she would scream and run crying to the teacher, who would then reinforce her behavior by punishing her victim.

Someone once wrote a very insightful essay entitled “All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” The basic premise behind it is that kindergarten is a microcosm--if you will—of the real world. In my kindergarten class, the little girl who enjoyed ruining everyone else’s finger paintings and then complaining to the teacher when anyone even so much as looked at hers could indeed be compared to Scientology.

Scientologists routinely go around pretending to espouse human rights and to help in the fight against drugs and crime and <gasp> homosexuality (the ex-wife of a disconnected friend of mine was told that Scientology could cure him if she continued to “disconnect" herself from her $650,000.00 bank account) when their real intent is to put their ugly handprint on and ruin their life.

The Church of Scientology’s very own doctrine refers to non-Scientologists in pejorative and derogatory terms, although they won’t admit that it does. Scientologists enjoy imposing their beliefs on non-Scientologists, and think nothing of it. When anyone criticizes it, they scream and run crying to the court system claiming religious persecution.

Well…guess what? “Freedom of religion” also means “freedom from religion.” People in this country have the freedom to pursue their spiritual lives as they see fit without any religion imposing itself on them—be it through deception or coercion.

“Persecute not lest ye be persecuted.”

If Scientology wants to be a bona fide religion, it needs to start behaving like a religion and not like the mind-controlling cult that it is. If it doesn’t know how to do that, then maybe it could ask a kindergartener. It might learn something about treating others the way that it wants to be treated...about sharing...about respect for the innate value of each individual as a human being and not as just another piece of raw meat to be processed.

For every one person that Scientology has claimed to help, there is at least one person that it has hurt. If you put negative energy out into the world then that is what comes back to you. You harvest what you have planted...that is natural law, and it can be no other way...unless you harvest what someone else planted, which raises numerous tangential, philosophical, ethical, and economic issues that are beyond the scope of this essay.

(The author lives in Phoenix, AZ, and writes from personal experience at having the practice of Scientology imposed upon him—as many others have had as well—through their policy of “disconnection”)