Scientologist Elects to be Bigoted

by Ben Widdicombe

New York Daily News [offsite]
Gatecrasher column [offsite] (Sunday 20 January 2008)

Have you been wondering who Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, who died in 1986, would vote for to be President?

Note: Ian Halperin has won the Rolling Stone magazine Award for Investigative Journalism. He is the author and coauthor of five books and is a regular correspondent for Court TV.

Investigative journalist Ian Halperin has. The best-selling author is about to publish Hollywood Undercover, his eposé of the controversial church. But when he asked a Scientology recruiter in Los Angeles the question, he received the most offensive response imaginable.

"He said, 'I can tell you who shouldn't be President — Barack Obama, Condoleezza Rice and the Rev. Al Sharpton. They should not be allowed to run for office, they should be sweeping the office.'"

I wonder what celebrity Scientologist Will Smith [offsite] would think of that?

Halperin, who posed as a gay man wishing to be "cured" by Scientology, says he aims to expose the prejudice of the church. (Bizarrely, he also claimed to be a wealthy "member of the Israeli royal family," which nobody questioned.)

Videos of his experiences are posted on YouTube.

"One of my sources ran into [ex-Mrs. Tom Cruise] Nicole Kidman at the gym about two years ago," Halperin told me. "When he said he was Jewish, she told him she likes religions with deep histories. She gave him a wink, and he took it as a dig at Scientology."

Halperin says he is producing a companion documentary.