http://www.lisatrust.net\court\injunction\01.htm Q's by John Merrett A's by Mary Story, OSA PR director in CW who was Scientology's CHOSEN spokesperson for this hearing.
Q. Now, you have not witnessed, since December 2nd, any episodes of violence against Scientologists, have you?
A. I have not witnessed any episodes of violence, but I have certainly witnessed pickets and people holding signs and [the] harassment of our staff when they're trying to cross the streets.
Q. What is the harassments you have seen?
A. Well, just having them out there with signs is unpleasant and harassing.
Q. Okay. So what you're complaining about is the exposure of the adherents of your organization to ideas and statements that they find offensive, correct?
A. Correct.
[....] You heard the testimony of the selected representative of Scientology organization, and her testimony under oath was that what she wished enjoined was the exposure of the adherents of her organization to words and ideas which they find offensive.
Your Honor, that was her testimony, almost word for word There are many prices that we pay for living in There’s a lot of prices for it. One of my favorite judges back home has a sign on the wall that says, "The price of our liberty is slavery to the law."
Another price of living in a democracy is the exposure to ideas that we find offensive, the exposure to ideas that we find hateful or even hurtful It is more telling than anything that I could have wished for that the statement of Scientology’s representative was simply that: We don’t want our people exposed to this speech There was no evidence of any injury to anybody, no complaint of any injury to anybody, only the fact that the free flow of information has penetrated, to one degree or another, a bubble that Scientology seeks to put around its adherents And that, Your Honor, while it may violate Mr. Hubbard’s principles, is exactly what the First Amendment is there for.
It is to insure that, at least in the public areas of life, there is a free marketplace of ideas.
Scientology is certainly welcome to keep its acolytes sheltered from the news and sheltered from the words of non-Scientologists on its own property, inside its own building, behind its blacked-out windows down on Cleveland Street, but it has no right to insist that other people forego the exercise of fundamental rights in order to assist them in the preservation of that ~G~a-uctic existence for their adherents. That is obscene.
Go Back
to Shy David's Scientology Page.