The amount of lies, assumptions and disinformation on this topic is astounding. I myself worked at the Church of Scientology as a volunteer for more than 5 years, and for a small period of time (about 2 months) I worked with brand new people walking in, at the Church of Scientology of Los Angeles.
In that brief period, I had a transexual (or transgender) person come in, we’ll call him/her Pearle. The physical representation was that of a person who was born male, and had been operated on (presumably) to have full breasts and wearing clothing designed for a female. I did not treat them any differently than anyone else we received at the Church. I did not mind calling her as a her personally and I don’t know of any church policy dictating what should be done in that scenario, although she did not ask of me how to call her.
She came in and asked a lot of questions about the religion, of course including whether or not Scientology accepted homosexuals, to which I answered honestly that yes of course we did. As well as some other normal expected questions, and she was interested and proceeded to do a personality test. The evaluation of the personality test is quite personal, and I was the one who examined her results and shared them with her, truthfully we connected in the evaluation, the results spoke to her very deeply and she was so impressed and felt that she had really really understood more of herself at that moment.
She was interested enough to proceed on to her first service at the Church, which was the Personal Efficiency course, and I vaguely remember she also bought a book, I saw her a bit later, and she had mentioned she was planning on coming back a couple of weeks later– at which time I would not be there anymore as my internship dealing with new people walking in was almost over. I don’t know if she continued any further, but she was very very happy with her first services and what she learned, and got plenty of invite from the personality test. She was treated with kindness and respect.
The truth is, if you ask any Scientologist, you can ask them if they believe in past lives, and then ask them if they believe they have been always a girl or always a boy in all of their pasts lives… Well I can tell you that it might seem strange that in another life you were a gender other than what you are now, but I believe that to be fully true myself personally, and the honestly could be partially the cause of what they call gender dysphoria.
Now you may have heard of a Scientology scripture saying that being homosexual is an “aberration”. All this means is that it is different than what is normal. A man and a man cannot have a baby, a woman and a woman cannot conceive a baby by themselves, so sure it’s an aberration to the degree that it’s not what is “normal” or “usual” but it does not mean that is not accepted and allowed and that people who are LGBT would be excluded from Scientology. There are many things in this world that are more aberrated than being LGBT, even more specifically there IS a sort of “mandate” or “rule” in Scientology to be faithful to your sexual partner AND to not be promiscuous which is part of The Way to Happiness.
I could easily argue that the guidance of The Way to Happiness, which is the book Scientologists prescribe to for morality, suggests that being straight and cheating on men or women, and being promiscuous and sleeping around would be immoral; and that if a person were straight or not, getting THAT straight would be the more important piece, not trying to dictate what gender to be faithful to.
At the same time, the book does encourage to Love and Help Children, and has a huge emphasis on children being vital to our survival.
I know many Scientologists who are gay and participate at the Church very very frequently and attend all the same events, do the same courses and receive the same help from the Church as any straight person. Some are happily married to someone of the same gender. So what?
If this comes as a big shocker to you, it’s possible you have been listening to a bit too many lies about us, and I am so glad you made it here. If you want to see more about what Scientology is about, check out Scientology Network.
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