Wrestler and actor Kevin Nash believes John Travolta is gay.
Nash makes the claim in an upcoming You Shoot DVD available atKayfabeCommentaries.com.
In a preview clip of the 155-minute special, Nash is asked whether Travolta hit on him during the 2004 filming of The Punisher. In the film, Travolta starred as the villain, while Nash played one of his henchmen.
When asked whether Travolta hit on him on the film's set, Nash answered: “All I'll say is this. I told my buddy from Pittsburgh when I got off the set, this was in 2003. I said, 'There's no way that dude's not gay.'”
Nash explained that Travolta would inappropriately wrap his arm around Nash's waist during photo opps.
“That's a little creepy,” Nash said.
He also described an incident in which Travolta gently caressed his naked shoulders in a makeup trailer. (The video is embedded on this page. Visit our video library for more videos.)


Lawrence Wright's "Going Clear": Author builds wall of facts on Scientology
By CRAIG SELIGMAN Bloomberg News 
Published: 1/20/2013  2:27 AM 
Last Modified: 1/20/2013  3:30 AM

Lawrence Wright's "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief" is a colossus of documentation, with 42 pages of endnotes, plus quite a few on-the-page footnotes, often in spots where a subject or a lawyer has disagreed with something the author reports. 

No doubt Wright and his publishers want to be in a strong position if the Church of Scientology comes after them. When Paulette Cooper published "The Scandal of Scientology" in 1971, she was sued 19 times. That wasn't all, as Wright recounts: 

"One day, when Cooper was out of town, her cousin, who was staying in her New York apartment, opened the door for a delivery from a florist. The deliveryman took a gun from the bouquet, put it to her temple and pulled the trigger. When the gun didn't fire, he attempted to strangle her. Cooper's cousin screamed and the assailant fled. 

"Cooper then moved to an apartment building with a doorman, but soon after that her 300 neighbors received letters saying that she was a prostitute with venereal disease who molested children." 

It may be just a coincidence, but a 1977 FBI raid on Scientology offices turned up a file devoted to "Operation Freakout," whose goal was to get Cooper "incarcerated in a mental institution or jail," Wright says. 

In an email to Bloomberg News, Scientology spokeswoman Karin Pouw called the book "a rehash of tabloid allegations about Scientology going back many decades" and wrote that the factual allegations in the book, in particular the "salacious and false allegations concerning violence," were "disproven long ago." 

The Church of Scientology was founded by L. Ron Hubbard (1911-86), a prolific writer of pulp science fiction who in 1950 turned to self-help with "Dianetics" (18 million copies sold, according to the church). 

Religion was next. "That's where the money is," he's reported to have said, though Wright doesn't think his motives were entirely venal. 

Hubbard told his followers that some 75 million years ago the Earth became a prison for billions of disembodied spirits from a faraway galaxy. These "thetans" attach themselves to human beings and impede spiritual progress; the methods of Scientology can not only expel them but also enhance physical powers (like eyesight) amazingly. 

As doctrines go, it's probably no wackier than believing that Jesus walked on water, or that an angel bestowed golden plates of revelation on a prophet in upstate New York, or that (as Jared Diamond put it in his recent "The World Before Yesterday") "a supernatural being gave a chunk of desert in the Middle East to the being's favorite group of people, as their home forever." 

Hubbard became increasingly paranoid, according to Wright. In 1967, he began leading his flock from a small fleet of ships, to evade the reach of governments. 

In 1973, he conceived Operation Snow White, under which "as many as 5,000 Scientologists were covertly placed in 136 government agencies worldwide" to purge their files of incriminating documents and evidently, according to Wright, to collect potential blackmail material. 

Among the anticipated victims Wright names: Gov. Jerry Brown of California, Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles and Frank Sinatra. 

Meanwhile, Wright says, Hubbard developed an interest in punishment and imprisonment as a road to spiritual redemption. 

He came up with some imaginative torments, according to Wright, such as ordering three miscreants to "race each other around the rough, splintery decks while pushing peanuts with their noses. 'They all had raw, bleeding noses, leaving a trail of blood behind them,' " a witness recalled. 

According to Wright, the abuses have continued under Hubbard's successor, David Miscavige. More than two dozen people told Wright they had been slapped, punched, kicked or choked by Miscavige, or had witnessed him abusing others. 

The punching bags don't, of course, include the church's two most famous boosters, John Travolta and Tom Cruise, both of whom Wright writes about extensively. He admires Travolta, recounting, for example, a story about the star verbally slapping down a dinner guest who used the word "faggot." 

Cruise creeps him out. (I have exactly the same response to both actors on screen.) The church, Wright reports, has been intimately involved in finding Cruise girlfriends, and at the end he charges him with some of the "moral responsibility" for the sect's abuses. (The church has said that Cruise has no trouble getting his own girlfriends and doesn't need its help.) 

For a book so bursting with weirdness, "Going Clear" is meager on drama. It's a little flat. Of course, florid writing would do Wright no favors in court if the church decided to sue him. But his fanaticism about facts diverts him from asking more interesting questions: 

Why did Hubbard's followers swallow it? Were they stupid? Were they cowed? Or were they sad, empty products of a consumer society who found no answers in established faiths and needed something to believe in? Is that why newly minted religions flourish in America? 

The further I got into "Going Clear," the more I wondered what use I could make of all these carefully documented facts about the Church of Scientology. I didn't need them to make me wary of it. I was wary before I began.

Original Print Headline: Author builds a wall of facts about Scientology

‘GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY, HOLLYWOOD AND THE PRISON OF BELIEF’
By Lawrence Wright
Knopf, $28.95
By CRAIG SELIGMAN Bloomberg News

Copyright 2013 World Publishing Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Other Tulsa World Books Stories
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‘No aliens living inside us’: Scientology educates the media

AMBER JAMIESON | JAN 22, 2013 12:43PM |  | PRINTe
A media guide released by the Church of Scientology is aimed at dispelling myths around the religion — turns out they’re not descended from aliens, but they do teach English to African migrants.
There’s no mention of Tom Cruise, the evil ruler Xenu or the Galactic Confederacy. But a media guide produced by the Church of Scientology has been sent to journalists to “address a number of misunderstandings” about the religion.
Church spokesperson Virginia Stewart denies the guide’s release is related to a new controversial book that examines the inner working of the church. “It just happened to be when we finished it,” she told Crikey.
The guide focuses on the Asia-Pacific region, but also covers general details about the church, such as that the word “Scientology” means “knowing how to know”, the religion’s ultimate goal is “true spiritual enlightenment and freedom for all” and it is entirely funded by its members. The guide also explains its two most common symbols:
Controversial, and core, beliefs — the church’s aversion to traditional psychiatric treatments and medicine, the use of e-meters to measure electrical charges in the body (used to “locate areas of spiritual distress or travail during auditing”) and the secretive Sea Organisation Order (individuals sign a billion-year pledge dedicating themselves to the SeaOrg and must leave if they have children) — are covered. It also addresses the “alien myth”, clarifying that “Scientology has no religious belief that we are descended from aliens or have aliens living inside us”.
More specific to Australia is a list of volunteer work that Australian Scientology ministers have been involved in. There was a small number of volunteers involved in the clean-up after the 2011 Queensland and Victorian floods, the Christchurch earthquake and the NSW bushfires, while Scientologists also provided English literacy classes for African migrants in Melbourne.
Pulitzer prize-winning writer Lawrence Wright penned a 26-page article on the Church of Scientology, largely based on interviews with ex-Scientologist and Hollywood screenwriter Paul Haggis, for The New Yorker in 2011. It offers a fascinating insight to the little-known religion and reveals that the FBI were investigating allegations of slavery in the SeaOrg. Haggis also claimed church leader David Miscavige is a controlling and vicious figure, and the church encourages members to cut themselves off from any family or friends who are not Scientologists.
But Stewart says the article had “no impact” on the church here in Australia and she has yet to meet anyone who even read it. “No one has mentioned it to us at all,” she said.
The article led to Wright’s book Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, which was released last week in a blaze of interviews and promotion. Stewart says she’s unconcerned. “It’s just mushing together allegations from other sources, there’s no new revelations,” she told Crikey. “I think he was just making money. Write a book and make money, that’s my personal view.”
Last week The Atlantic removed a paid advertisement for the Church of Scientology that was written to appear like a normal article (its comments were also moderated to only allow pro-church comments) after a public backlash. It is now reviewing its advertising and content policies.
When asked about The Atlantic incident, Stewart replied: “I think that there’s some people who no matter what you do, they still don’t like it. There’s people who don’t like religion, doesn’t matter if you’re a Scientologist or a Catholic.”
More damaging to Australian Scientologists are the local tabloid current affair shows. After one TV show displayed an aerial map of the church’s headquarters in Dundas, Sydney, “hooligans came and abused us”, Stewart says. “All of a sudden, rocks and things are being smashed, graffiti, our cars are being egged. It’s horrible,” she said.
The release of the media guide is to encourage more balanced reporting, Stewart says. “With the more non-online media, we would often get calls,” she said. “With online, it’s changed all of that. Something comes in and it just goes straight out. For online media, the balance we’ve experienced, we don’t get as much of a say or get asked. We’re very happy to answer questions.”
The 2012 census showed just 2136 Australians identified as Scientologists, but the church claims the figure is much higher and Scientologists fear identifying themselves. The only numbers the church can provide are flimsy — it claims to have 250,000 people on its Asia-Pacific mailing list, which includes Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Taiwan.
Stewart acknowledges the media coverage of the religion is completely out of whack to the number of Scientologists in Australia. “We’ve been told by media, ‘[it’s] because you keep getting the ratings up’.”