During the Berlin years, if I remember my celebrity gossip correctly.

Granted by internet standards, I am an Old, but I feel like I've known about this tidbit for my entire life. I mean, not 10th grade typing class forever, but still. :)

The Mick Jagger/David Bowie affair has been open Hollywood gossip since, basically, forever. Bowie used to be quiet free about discussing his bi-sexuality, though I think he's walked back a bit from his statements in his mature years.

What's that saying? From your mouth to god's ear?

Are you a generic cult hobbiest or is it just Scientologists? There's a couple really interesting biographies out there from people who got out of Children of God in the late 80s/early 90s.

I haven't been a formal member of a church in easily a decade, so I can't say this is current practice, but it was throughout my childhood and well into my twenties.

Thank you for the tip, but I'm the head mod on this site. The trollpatrol link I posted is the correct way to report a troll on Jezebel. While you can email the help desk, they have plenty to do and there's no reason to bother them with issues the moderators can take care of.

Thanks! I'll put it on my requests list at the library.

www.jezebel.com/trollpatrol/forum

Oh, fantastic. I can't wait to read it. Thanks!

The Sea Org members are essentially slave labor. You don't want them to have outside ties to the community or children or family, because they might start to think they don't want their kids to be raised to be unpaid workers or think they should get an education or ... I think the idea is that there's plenty of…

I think she talks about it on the website she manages (it's linked above). But there's a handful of similar stories from other people who have made it out of the organization, so I understood where her story was going.

The "Inside Scientology' does have a lot of information about Sea Org and a bit about not allowing the women to have children. Children distract from the mission. It makes the parents think about the kids and not about what they're doing for the church. And so on and so forth. Really great book — I can't recommend it…

I don't know if they still do it, but yep, we got a detailed spreadsheet at the end of the year. It also affected my tuition at the attached school. If my parents hadn't donated enough, my tuition cost was also raised.

The Sea-Org members were forbidden from having kids. Possibly for monetary reasons, but ultimately, it's about control.

Growing up, my Catholic church kept an account of everything you gave in Sunday services (you got little envelopes with account numbers on them) and they'd send you a bill at the end of the year if you hadn't given enough.

Really? Because Go Ask Xenu has a much higher user rating on Amazon.

It's really quite good. One of the best books I read last year.

For people interested in learning more about Scientology (beyond the website listed above), I highly recommend the book 'Inside Scientology' by Janet Reitman. Impeccably researched, well written, fascinating account of the history of the 'religion'.

I was thinking of them too. We've been living with the reality genre for a while — it's just more prevalent now.