From a galaxy far, far away - a gay man disavows Elizabeth Clare Prophet - Brief Article

Elizabeth Clare Prophet was my first diva. She tough that unrepentant homosexuals would received the final annihilation of their souls.

Coming out to your cult is not as easy as it sounds. There are consequences: the revelation that one of your incarnations was an evil homosexual priest who caused the sinking of Atlantis, the edict that after death you'll be last in line behind billions of other souls seeking embodiment. The last guy who outed himself in my former cult was told that he was responsible for bringing homosexuality to this galaxy.

We all have people from our past whom we've never told we're gay because, well, what's the point? What was I going to do? Call cult headquarters and tell them I had a boyfriend? Taking a more subtle route, ! did it on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, where I read a four-minute commentary about how I once tried to rescue this dying planet from sinister intergalactic races.

Coming out to my former guru was not easy. Once upon a time I gave Elizabeth Clare Prophet enormous power, venerated her like the naive 19-year-old seeker I was. I thought her resplendent in her emerald-and-cobalt silk saris woven with gold thread, so severe in fitted Ann Taylor suits, vanilla and powder blue. Glints from the jewels she wore on all ten fingers would strike me as she held forth at her altar, which looked like the set for some occult opera. She channeled such cosmic notables as Jesus, Buddha, Hercules, Saint Germain, and K-17, head of the Cosmic Secret Service.

Prophet claimed to be the reincarnation of Helen of Troy, Marie Antoinette, Saint Clare, Empress Mumtaz Mahal, Queen Guinevere, Queen Clotilda, the queen of Sheba, and Queen Nefertiti. We called her Mother. She was, in case you haven't figured it out by now, my first diva. She taught that unrepentant homosexuals would receive the Second Death, the final annihilation of their souls. She told us that command-ship flying saucers zapped humans with death rays, disease rays, disintegrating rays, stupefying rays, and rays of insanity and suicide. Did I mention the Soviet Squad of Tibetan Killer Monks? After six years of this nonsense, I left the Church Universal and Triumphant when I was 26 years old, 15 years ago.

This past January I sat in NPR's Los Angeles bureau, patched into Washington, D.C. I faced a mike the size of my fist and suddenly realized I had been out to everyone except Prophet. "People always ask how I got into the cult, and my answer only serves to dig me in deeper," I read. "My parents, wanting me to become straight, sent me to a therapist, who introduced me to her guru, Elizabeth Clare Prophet."

The microphone fist loomed, seemed to clench before my face. I spoke a word, but there was only the sound of my throat, caught. My eyes welled with tears. I told of how I invoked the Annihilation Ray each day to zap the cause and core of my homosexuality. I thought of the Annihilation Ray as a suicide capsule, like the ones used on Mission: Impossible/e, but instead of killing me it would kill what was inside of me. With hundreds I shouted scores of times "Smash! Blast! Annihilate! Shatter! Dissolve and Consume!" into the gay rights movement. Was there ever a lower bottom to a man's self-hate? Or a greater height to the fear, paranoia, and foolishness of a religious movement?

After I got the final words out, there was silence from Washington. The Los Angeles producers stopped fiddling with the soundboard. They stared at me from the safety of their booth as if I were a Tibetan Killer Monk who would zap them with a stupefying ray. The reading felt like an initiation, and I was left cleansed, empty.

Although I had done intense psychotherapy after leaving the cult to get myself back, reading my commentary was a final, public exorcism. I felt my words pound some final nail into the coffin of that manipulative fantasy world. Many will not publicly speak against Prophet because they still believe her warning that leaving the cult will plunge them into 10,000 years of spiritual darkness. They still give her immense power. I got mine back.

I don't know what Elizabeth Clare Prophet is saying about me these days. There's a rumor that I was Oscar Wilde in my most recent past life. Damn. I wanted to be responsible for introducing homosexuality to this galaxy.

Foster, a Los Angeles-based writer, recently finished his half-life memoir, Cultboy: My Final Incarnation With Elizabeth Clare Prophet.

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