Paul Haggis on Scientology: 'Morally reprehensible'

Everybody has his or her own take on Paul Haggis' dramatic letter, announcing his break with Scientology after 35 years of membership in the church. But what especially fascinated me was how much his letter, full of passion and moral outrage, resembled large portions of his film and TV work, especially his scripts for "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Crash," the latter of which won him an Oscar.

If you missed the news, the Church of Scientology was a public sponsor of Proposition 8, which Haggis describes in his letter as "a hate-filled legislation that succeeded in taking away the civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens of California."

Haggis had apparently been campaigning for months to get the church's official spokesman, Tommy Davis, to condemn the Prop 8 sponsorship, saying he couldn't in good conscience be a member of an organization in which gay-bashing was tolerated. But to no avail. It's intriguing to see that once Haggis saw the church in a new light, he found himself alienated from some of its others actions. For me, the letter's most astounding revelation is that Haggis calls out the church for its policy of disconnection, which apparently calls for members to cut their ties with people Scientology has deemed as unfriendly to the church.

Haggis acknowledges that his wife was ordered to disconnect from her parents because of something they supposedly did 25 years earlier when they resigned from the church. His wife followed the church's orders, refusing to speak to her parents, who'd introduced her to Scientology in the first place. As for Haggis, he says that he refused to break off contact, explaining, "I've never been good at following orders, especially when I find them morally reprehensible."

It was at that point in his letter that I realized that Haggis was a dead-on spiritual heir to Dalton Trumbo, the best-known screenwriter of his generation and perhaps the most prominent member of the Hollywood 10, who was blacklisted for his membership in the Communist Party. Like Haggis, Trumbo was the high priest of righteous indignation, firing off blistering letters at a rapid pace to friends and enemies alike. (They are collected in "Additional Dialogue: Letters of Dalton Trumbo, 1942-1962," a must-read for anyone interested in the history of Hollywood in the era of the blacklist.) In Trumbo's day, the enemy wasn't Scientology but rabid anti-Communist crusaders as well as weaselly Hollywood careerists who refused to stand up to the worst excesses of the Red Scare.

But see for yourself. Here is Haggis, writing to Davis, in reference to a series of stories in the St. Petersburg Times, that detailed a host of church excesses:

"And when I pictured you assuring me that it is all lies, that this is nothing but an unfounded and vicious attack by a group of disgruntled employees, I am afraid that I saw the same face that looked in the camera and denied the policy of disconnection. I heard the same voice that professed outrage at our support of Proposition 8, who promised to correct it and did nothing. I was left feeling outraged, and frankly, more than a little stupid."

And here is Trumbo, writing to a former movie biz pal, who had turned on Trumbo when the screenwriter was being hounded by right-wing zealots:

"You should not, in your letter to me, assume a whore's virtue at confession by using the word 'affection.' My affection caused me to assert your ability to producers when you were out of favor; yours impelled you to cry out against me in the most fatal hour of my career. Mine persuaded me to spend long hours in discussion of your story problems when you sought to re-establish yourself; yours led you to organizational meetings calculated to deprive me of my rights within the Guild, to destroy my good name and to make it impossible for me to work in my profession. Give me no more such affection. I stagger beneath that already conferred. Give me rather your hatred and let me console myself by the exchange of a weak friend for a strong enemy."

Ah, the lesson here is clear: Beware the wrath of a screenwriter scorned!

RELATED:

Dalton Trumbo: Rare tribute to blacklisted screenwriter

Writers could learn a lesson from 'Trumbo'

Photos: Paul Haggis by Claudio Onorati / EPA; Dalton Trumbo by Mitzi Trumbo.

Comments

[misanthropicus]

Blah-blah-blah! The Hollywood buffoons never run out of energy when it comes to McCarthy.
McCarthy was perfectly right, and Trumbo was a rotten commie, and in the most difficult times for this country, at the peak of the confrontation with the Soviet Union, the most murderous polity ever happened on this planet, he preferred to support Stalin, not America.

And you Goldstein, you sure have a rotten mind, because you clearly find that one who whole-heartedly supported the Goulags, the purges and the execution of close to 100 million innocent people is actually an hero to celebrate -

Hah - a man for all seasons Trumbo sure wasn't, and you Goldstein, look even worse in your hypocrisy when try to find any redeeming feature in that monster's career -

Yuk - die, Hollywood, die -

[Kat]

Look up Kathy Griffin's video on You Tube about her friend's experience with Scientology. It is fascinating and not too difficult to see how people get sucked in. It is all about money/power and self-righteousness.

[magpie]

I read his letter, and as i am someone who has been in scientology for many years i find his letter to be quite disingenuous. first of all, duh, there is a policy of disconnection that would be akin to friends, family, and/or a therapist recommending that you "disconnect" from an abusive boyfriend. people can get kicked out of protestant or catholic churches, but i don't hear him complaining about that of course. also, scientologists tend to trend more conservative, and this guy does not. philosophically i would compare scientologists to ayn rand, except scientologists believe in the spiritual, or mystical, whereas ayn did not.

it is pretty obvious from day one upon becoming a scientologist that homosexuality is viewed as an aberration. that does not mean that scientologists, or the church advocates that homosexuals be abused, or persecuted, or discriminated against in anyway; no, they simply view homosexuality as an aberration, or a less than "pro survival" way to live. this is clearly stated in the book "science of survival," for example. this is a pretty basic book, did this guy somehow NOT read it? i doubt it.

for this guy to be in scientology for 35 years, as he claims, and NOT be aware of this viewpoint regarding homosexuality, he must have been completely blind. personally, i think he is lying. scientologists typically are not all that liberal, which is another reason why i find this guy's letter suspect. his list of causes and awards reads like a who's who of liberal bandwagons. i do not recall the church of scientology ever coming out and publicly (or privately mind you), supporting any political agenda or legislation; however, scientology certainly believes that an individual should not be punished or penalized for being successful or being wealthy. i would add thought that the church isn't all that politically active, being generally suspicious of government in general ( you know, kind of like our founding fathers were).

one of the most disturbing things about his so-called letter is his repeated claims that the rights of homosexuals are being "taken away." he repeats this several times. this is ludicrous. first of all, we, as a country, have never extended the right to same sex marriage to any group. marriage is reserved for couples that hve the potential to reproduce, whereas homosexuals do not even have that potential. homosexuals have the same right as anyone else to marry someone of the opposite sex. there is hardly any "right" being "taken away." the concept of same sex marriage is a pretty radical one, which has not been embraced in any society until very recently. yes, things are changing, but it is still not the norm. in the US, the vast majority of americans do not support gay marriage. i suppose the vast majority of americans are bigots then, even though gay marriage is a radical new idea that has known little precedent in human history. but that's okay, we're all bigots, and especially those "evil" scientologists. uh huh, yeah, right.

this guy is full of crap. if he was a scientologist at all i would be surprised. he certainly doesn't sound like one, and based on the majority of the lefty causes he supports i doubt it even more.

[Runitup]

So it took Haggis 35 years to discover this?? What was he thinking the first 34 years??

[Mary McConnell]

Trumbo was a communist and wished to stay with his beliefs and work undercover. That took integrity but it also took cunning. Both Haggis and Trumbo left at the expense of a possible lifetime of harassment or shunning from his peers, and took a stand. Scientology runs like McCarthyism, as any victim or expoerienced journalist will tell you ( off the record that is)

That's where the similarities end.

Haggis took a stand and inspected his beliefs and decided that there was something wrong with the group he was in and left because of his beliefs. remained a die hard communist and had the FBI to worry about. Scientology is a nothing pseudoreligion with many less members than their PR men try to spin. The have a history of harassing enemies. Haggis knew this when he wrote the private letter to Tommy Davis.

Paul Haggis had a real eye opener when he started looking at the internet. He saw and heard things that Scientology does not want members to see. There is an sort of orchestrated indoctrination with members and especially celebrities, to get them to avoid the internet . Scientologists are not allowed to disagree with scientology. There's the threat if being kicked out and harassed and the threat of having your personal confessions revealed, like as Haggis saw with with Amy Scobee. We all know that Nicole Kidman faced similar threat and walked away silently for the sake of her children.

That Prop 8 matter and Tommy Davis' unwillingness to correct it over time is what lead Haggis to the internet, which is the Liberty Tree for scientologists, as Arnie Lerma says.

That letter was never intended to go public, according to his publicist but I am glad it did. By exposing the truth, especially about the organization being homophobic and there being a disconnection policy, maybe it can help other celebrities who are in scientology who have been indoctrinated to not look at what this cult is doing.

[Dave]

Thanks for glorifying the soviet communists, the millions of dead in Stalins concentration camps thank you...

Scientology should be investigated under the RICO act

[jim]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_topics_and_Scientology

As you can see, Scientology is virulently anti-gay ("extremely dangerous" and "incapable of love" and should be incarcerated). How can Tommy Davis say otherwise?

[Jenny]

That's funny.... I just read a article about a Scientologist who is Gay and it is dated Nov 24 2000. "I'M HERE, I'M QUEER, I'M A SCIENTOLOGIST! Keith Relkin, a gay Scientologist from West Hollywood, responds to Patrick Tsakuda's article in Fab!" Here is the link - http://www.liveandgrow.org/fab-scn.html

I also read the recent msnbc story in which the Church responds to the recent claims. Here is the link to the story - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33498755/ns/entertainment-gossip/

[Rachel]

I'm with you Leslie. Sounds like Scientology helped him become the success he is today because obviously he wasn't successful when he started and now like a blanket he tries to say all Scientologists are anti-gay. Kirstie Alley wrote on her Twitter account that she's totally for gays getting married. So I guess he's a liar. I wonder what else he's lying about?

[John Galt]

The bigger problem is we've allowed government to expand into every nook and cranny of our lives, to control and tell us what we can and cannot be, do or have.

Scientologists aren't anti-gay, but so what if a church wants to be political? The government has used the tax-exempt clause to tell ministers and priests to shut up about government wrongs.

And so what if gays want to get married? We let this fall upon ourselves by allowing government to take over various social contracts. You have to get a marriage license from the state to be "married"? Give me a break!

Until we quit supporting governments which oppress us, regulate us, steal from us, license us, etc., our liberties and freedom will continue to dwindle.