Surf’s Up for Scientologists

Admirers of L. Ron Hubbard have launched a major environmental and morality offensive in Southern California’s beach cities, rankling critics who say the proselytizers have been less than forthcoming about their ties to the Church of Scientology.

The controversy first flared when Scientology Surf Club president Rob Hoover asked the city of Malibu to proclaim March 13 L. Ron Hubbard Day, in honor of Scientology’s founder. The request made the City Council agenda, but was withdrawn by Hoover when March 13 came and went with no action.

“I was shocked when I saw [the proclamation request] on the agenda,” said longtime Malibu resident Ruby Fader. “I don’t see any reason to promote the Church of Scientology. To me, it is a cult.”

Both the ACLU and the Malibu city attorney said the proclamation would have violated the constitutional separation of church and state. That didn’t stop the San Diego County city of Encinitas, however, which in March issued a Hubbard Day proclamation — without realizing that Hubbard was Scientology’s founder, according to Encinitas Mayor James Bond. Bond said Hoover told him only that Hubbard was a writer and surfer who lived in Encinitas in 1934.

“I think that, in truth, he should have let us know that [Hubbard] was a founder of Scientology so we at least had that knowledge,” Bond said. “What his motive was for not sharing it with me only he knows.” (Hoover, who used Scientology letterhead to make his request, said he had assumed Bond knew who Hubbard was.)

Adding clout to Hoover’s requests for proclamations was his beach cleanup work with Heal the Bay and the Surfrider Foundation, two well-respected groups dedicated to saving California’s coastline. Maria Ferrara, vice president of public affairs for the Church of Scientology’s Celebrity Center, is on the Surfrider foundation‘s executive committee.

In pitching the Hubbard Day idea to Malibu, Hoover presented the City Council with a copy of Hubbard’s 1981 “Way to Happiness” moral code. The code is disseminated worldwide by the Way to Happiness Foundation. The foundation claims to be separate from the Church of Scientology. But executive director Joni Ginsberg and celebrity spokeswoman Nancy Cartwright (the voice of Bart Simpson) are both Scientologists. Bridge Publications prints both the “Happiness” code and Hubbard’s religious and science-fiction writings.

“We use [the “Happiness” code] as an inspiration,” said Ferrara. “It is separate from the church. We employ the book because it is so universal.”

In April, foundation members took part in the Church of Scientology Celebrity Center International’s Adopt-a-Beach cleanup at Zuma Creek. Ferrara got a photo credit for a picture of the cleanup that appeared on the front page of the April 27 issue of the Malibu Times. The newspaper did not disclose Ferrara’s connection to the church or the cleanup event. Copies of the 95-page “Happiness” handbook, with 21 moral precepts, including “Don’t be promiscuous,” “Do not murder” and “Safeguard and improve your environment,” were passed out to surfers and contestants during a Malibu surf competition last month, put on by the Way to Happiness Foundation.

Ferrara, however, insisted church members are trying to clean up the beaches, not recruit new members.

“It is the most unglamorous thing you can do in your life,” said Ferrara. “We’re out there in a social capacity, not a religious one.” —Christine Pelisek

LOSING HIS RELIGION?

In other Scientology news, OffBeat was amazed to read in US weeklyearlier this month that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman had begun severing their ties to the Church of Scientology. USalso reported that Cruise, while filming the Warner Bros. film Eyes Wide Shut, had “hinted” to the studio that releasing the John Travolta project Battlefield Earthwould be a mistake. A week later, however, US Weekly ran a “For the Record” notice declaring that the magazine had subsequently “found” that Cruise remains an “active and committed member of the Church of Scientology” and that the actor had never said, much less “hinted,” anything negative about Battlefield. Nevertheless, the widely panned sci-fi groaner, based on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s novel, appears to be going down as a colossal box-office failure. OffBeat, which has been the object of Scientology’s none-too-tender PR ministrations, would love to know what went on behind the scenes of the correction . . .

ANOTHER RAMPART CASE BITES THE DUST

Yet another Rampart CRASH officer was exonerated Friday of internal charges in a case that raises questions about whether the LAPD is competent to root out corruption. Considering the scope of wrongdoing described by ex-Officer Rafael Perez, the central figure in the sweeping Rampart scandal, the charge against Sergeant George Hoopes seemed almost silly — failing to report on-duty officers for toasting a fellow officer at a going-away party. Hoopes’ attorney, Joel Isaacson, suggested at the department hearing last week that the brass was simply looking for scapegoats in the ongoing Rampart scandal. “This is a political case,” Isaacson said Friday.

It was also, as it turned out, a flimsy case. Hoopes was among as many as a dozen officers Perez placed at the March 1998 “mug party” held on the grounds of the Police Academy in Elysian Park for Daniel Lujan, longtime partner to Brian Hewitt, a CRASH officer named in a notorious station-house beating of a handcuffed gang member. Hewitt presented Lujan with a .45-caliber revolver as more than 20 fellow officers looked on; the group then passed around a ceremonial mug of alcohol.