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Religious Freedom
I want to be exceedingly clear that I am not protesting a religion. I am not protesting the doctrines of Scientology. I am not trying to infringe on the rights of any individual to practice any faith that they choose. That is not the purpose of Anonymous and is the complete antithesis of everything I personally believe in.
What Anonymous and I are protesting is the organization, not the faith. We are protesting the unlawful actions of the leaders of the Church of Scientology. We're protesting their abusive policies, which in many cases we feel manipulates the doctrine in order to control innocent people. For instance, we don't have any problem with auditing itself, but we object to the way auditing is used to record private confessions which are later used for blackmail. Even if some of us think the whole Xenu story sounds a little funny, we don't even object to that. We just object to the fact that the creation story of the church is withheld from the members until they've paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the church. And even then, once they've paid their fees, the church orders them not to talk about it with anyone. Wives can't talk to their husbands, parents can't talk to their children, members can't discuss the doctrine between themselves. The Xenu story isn't the problem here, it's the way it's manipulated to control and separate the members.
I personally believe that Scientology isn't unique as an example of malicious individuals utilizing something that is essentially blameless to manipulate and control others. Some of the greatest and most beneficial things in this world can at once be both profoundly beautiful, and profoundly destructive. I like to think of it like fire - it can warm us and our children in winter, it can make our food safer to eat, and it can give us light in the unrelenting darkness. But it can also destroy homes, it can turn wildnerness into wasteland, it can so easily kill. That doesn't mean that fire is good or bad, just that its uses cover the spectrum from life-saving to life-ending, from good to evil.
Anonymous absolutely believes in complete freedom of religion. But we do not believe that religious organizations have carte blanche to use faith to manipulate and blackmail innocent people. Anonymous believes that any organization that uses religion as a facade for criminal activity is the single greatest threat to our religious freedom; it is a fire that will not warm our homes, but will destroy them.
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