Scientology's 'heretic': How Marty Rathbun became the arch-enemy of L Ron Hubbard devotees

[n2doc]

GUY ADAMS SATURDAY 07 APRIL 2012

The men who came for Marty Rathbun wore a kind of uniform: dark glasses, clipped facial hair, and light blue T-shirts. Each carried either a microphone, or a video camera. On their chests were pictures of a squirrel, upon which a photograph of Marty's head had been crudely superimposed. Topping off the ensemble were black baseball caps with an embroidered slogan stitched in white above the peak. It proclaimed: 'SQUIRREL BUSTERS'.

There were four of them, and they appeared around lunchtime on 18 April last year. Marty was making a sandwich in the kitchen of his home in Ingleside on the Bay, on the Gulf Coast of Texas. When he heard them knock, he grabbed a video camera kept on his sideboard for such an occasion. Then he turned it on to 'record' and proceeded to the front door.

There followed a brief altercation which, even by the standards of YouTube, where clips of what occurred were later posted, seems impossibly surreal. "Come on, Marty!" bellows the group's middle-aged leader, who wears a camera on his head, "got anything to say?" Rathbun asks who he is. "I'm with Squirrel Buster Productions," comes the reply. "I'm doing an investigation on you, and your squirrel technology." Heated discussions ensue. "We'll be here for weeks and weeks," promises one of the men, after Marty orders them off his property. Another adds: "As long as it takes!".


They weren't lying. From that point onwards, men wearing 'squirrel buster' outfits began turning up outside Rathbun's home every few hours. Sometimes, they'd arrive in a car; often, as the long, hot summer wore on, in a golf buggy. Occasionally, they moored boats in the canal outside his home. According to a harassment log local police advised Marty to keep, they'd video him inside and outside the property. From time to time, they'd also pepper his wife, Monique, with hostile questions, often about their sex life.


more

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/scientologys-heretic-how-marty-rathbun-became-the-archenemy-of-l-ron-hubbard-devotees-7618944.html

[DonCoquixote]

1. Sigh

This "church" has been caught trying to set up "charter schools" in Florida, using it's discredited "study tech." However, considering how much Rathburn was a part of that leg-breaking and head-cracking that led to the church taking over Clearwater, Florida, I have little sympathy for him. The Squirrel Busters may be annoying pests, who do not do their church any good, but Rathburn would do harsher things than they ever did before breakfast.

[HiPointDem]

3. If charter schools are allowed, and public funding of religious education is allowed, why can't

Scientologists teach their religion, using their methods, in their charter school, in their city, and get public money for it as others do?

That's what allowing charter schools opens you up to.

[freshwest]

6. That was what they were always about, along with 'white flight.'

[waddirum]

9. "their city"?

No group should own or control any city, despite being a majority or whatever.

[HiPointDem]

10. But they do. In Florida, of course.

[freshwest]

5. Thanks for the perspective. But any group that calls someone who leaves them a 'heretic' is...

Really into control and against free will. This is why I've always believed in secularism, even when I attended church for many years. There has to be a place where people are free to think for themselves without being unmercifully harassed like this.

I should think that there would be a stalking law to prevent this, but don't see anything at the link showing the police really did anything about this, just no billed him on the squirrel patrol's complaints.

Kudos to the neighbors who stood up for him, saying when he offered to move to save them the trouble:

"They said, 'You're not going anywhere!'," he recalls.

"The lady who lives next door told us, 'This country was founded on freedom of religion. Who are they to come across the country and tell you how to go about your religious activity? That's not America!'."

Those are the kind of Texans that I love.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. Sounds like they have their own version of the Spanish Inquisition

-- which nobody ever expects.

[PDJane]

4. I'm not entirely sure that Scientology is odder than, say, Mormonism.

There are a lot of really odd and awkward cult-like religions out there that believe some very strange things. Truthfully, to me, most fundamentalist religions are at least that peculiar.

It's one of the reasons that organized religions are, to me, just another control mechanism.

[Tom Ripley]

7. I have always assumed that Mormonism was the inspiration for Scientology

same science fiction bullshit

[Poll_Blind]

8. Scientology is some very bad news. It is a psycho cult that destroys those within and without.

As evidenced by an ever-growing trail of videos and accounts like these.

They are the closest thing America has to the old Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan and an escalation of their tactics to include outright terrorist attacks would surprise very few. They are a personality cult and personality cults degrade as the personalities behind them become more and more unbalanced.

PB