PROGRAM/MEETING

Tuesday, October 10,  at Christ United Methodist Church. Regular Meeting begins at 7:30pm.  Board Meeting at 6:30pm.   Our program as of press time has not been confirmed. 

ANTI-GAY SCIENTOLOGISTS BACKED MARK
New York Post, October 4, 2006 - By Niles Lathem and Ian Bishop 

October 4, 2006 -- WASHINGTON - Mark Foley, who resigned from Congress because he got caught sending sexually suggestive e-mails to teenage male pages, had a political relationship with the very anti-gay Church of Scientology, it was revealed yesterday.  The controversial cult-like church has major operations in Clearwater, Fla., which just happens to be in Foley's district. The group also hosted a fund-raiser for Foley in May 2003 when he was considering a Senate run.

It posted photographs of a smiling Foley posing with key Scientology officials who presented him with a copy of founder L. Ron Hubbard's tome "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health."  That book defines "homosexuality" as a "sexual perversion."  Although he never officially came out of the closet, that Foley was gay was one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington. A spokeswoman for the church did not return calls seeking comment.
 

Former Clearwater mayor dead at 86
St. Petersburg Times, September 29, 2006  By Mike Donila and Robert Farley, Staff Writers, with Craig Basse: Gabe Cazares was a civil rights activist and vocal enemy of the Church of Scientology.

CLEARWATER — Former Clearwater Mayor Gabe Cazares, a civil rights advocate, champion of the disadvantaged and arch-enemy of the Church of Scientology, died Friday (Sept. 29, 2006). He was 86. As a politician, Mr. Cazares led the local Democratic Party and won public office at a time when few Hispanics even lived in Pinellas County.   As a community activist, he worked to help the poor and build bridges in Clearwater during the early years of integration. But after the Church of Scientology came to town in late 1975, Mr. Cazares became an outspoken critic, prompting Scientologists to hatch plans to smear him with sex allegations and a phony hit-and-run accident.

Mr. Cazares questioned the church’s motives, its quiet purchases of downtown property and the way its security guards carried billy clubs and Mace.  “I am unable to understand why this degree of security is required by a religious organization, and my concerns are shared by many other citizens,” Mr. Cazares said in January 1976.  Within months, Clearwater was enveloped in a hostile, polarized environment marked by spying, sharp rhetoric, protests and smear tactics — some of them targeting Mr. Cazares.

Federal investigators later found Scientology internal memos outlining plans by church leaders to control public opinion in Clearwater, concoct a sex smear campaign against Mr. Cazares and infiltrate the local media and other institutions.  Scientology documents also revealed that church members had staged a phony hit-and-run accident with Mr. Cazares in an attempt to discredit him.  The criminal investigation led to prison sentences against 11 high-ranking Scientologists for breaking into federal offices in Washington.   When the smoke eventually cleared, a $1.5-million defamation lawsuit filed by Mr. Cazares and his wife against the church was settled out of court in 1986. It was one of several suits between Mr. Cazares and the church over the years.

“Gabe saw Scientology as a threat to the city and very aggressively pointed those potential problems out to the electorate,” said Ron Stuart, a former editor of the Clearwater Sun, who was also targeted by Scientologists.  “He quickly got on the Scientologists’ enemy list,” said Stuart, now the spokesman for the Pinellas-Pasco judicial circuit. “That was the atmosphere in the city at the time. Gabe didn’t let it faze him. He stayed on it.”

In the end, Mr. Cazares’ work as a civic leader will be his legacy, family and friends say. “He was just part of the community — wherever he was,” said Mayme Hodges, who worked closely with Mr. Cazares over the years.  “When you get involved in causes and people, you don’t look at anything but the cause. You’re thinking about the good of the community and the good of people. Period. And I think that’s what Gabe was focusing on.”  Mr. Cazares mingled with everyone he could, from marching in the poorer North Greenwood area to honor Martin Luther King Jr. to chit-chatting with the affluent.  “No matter where we went, his hand was always there to give a shake,” said Clearwater police Lt. James Steffens, who became Mr. Cazares’ godson in 1974.  “He was a giant amongst men who chose to be humble,” Steffens said. “I’m going to celebrate his life. He’s the real deal.”

Mr. Cazares once gave a key to the city to a Florida State University student who had been taunted with racial remarks. And he always supported farm workers. “Gabe, he just kept going on forever,” said Norm Bungard, who worked with Mr. Cazares through Pinellas Habitat for Humanity projects. “Causes for the downtrodden, the poor — Gabe was there.”  Mr. Cazares collected food, clothing and personal hygiene items and distributed them by the carload to migrant workers in Dade City in rural Pasco County. “I don’t think very many people knew about that,” said his longtime friend and former attorney, Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Walt Logan.

Gabriel “Gabe” Cazares was born on Jan. 31, 1920 in Alpine, Texas, one of nine children, and reared in Los Angeles, where he worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps.  At Los Angeles City College, which he attended on a track scholarship, he set a record for the junior college 2-mile run that stood for 11 years.  He also studied at Fresno State College and Texas Christian University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology, and the University of Maryland. He received a master’s degree in business management from Jackson College in Honolulu.  Much of his college work was done in the military. He joined the Army Air Forces in 1941 and rose to lieutenant colonel, retiring from service in 1966 to become a stockbroker. He moved to Clearwater a short time later when, as he once said, “you could count the number of Hispanics on one hand.”  “Stockbroking was a way for him to make a living at the time, but caring for people has always been his life,” said Anne Garris, a reporter and editor for the Beach Views newspaper during the 1970s.  Mr. Cazares met with white and black leaders throughout the city “to show compassion for anyone who was underprivileged,” she said.

“We never had a real racial rupture in Clearwater and I think that was because of the work Gabe did,” Garris said. “Gabe and the other leaders in the community were always talking.”  For more than two decades he was a major public figure once described as an anomaly in conservative Pinellas County. He was a Democrat in the Republican courthouse and a Hispanic in a county where minorities had trouble winning elections.  In 1975, Mr. Cazares jumped into the Clearwater mayor’s race, drawing support from civic associations and organized labor. Although he was untried in politics and his chief opponent was a veteran city commissioner, Mr. Cazares surprised many people with a resounding victory.

In 1998, his complaints against a Taco Bell commercial featuring a talking Chihuahua were quoted around the world. Some people found the commercial demeaning to Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.   Mr. Cazares saw the ad as a tongue-in-cheek way to raise awareness of the poor.  “He told me: 'Any time I can raise a fuss and call attention to the plight of the farm workers, I’m going to do it,’ ” said Bungard. “That was his purpose.” Mr. Cazares is survived by his brother, Arturo Cazares; nieces Gloria Romero, Lee Jennings, Cynthia Cruz, Tiffany McConnell, Xoch Tuck, Cookie Hotard; nephews Ed Pawlack, Greg Albino, Johnny Pawlack, Chris Cazares; godson James Steffens; goddaughter Larri Gerson; 12 great-nieces and -nephews; and 12 great-great-nephews and -nieces. His wife Maggie died in 1989. His wife Velma died of cancer in 2004 while he was undergoing heart surgery.

Times obituary editor Craig Basse contributed to this report. Note:  Gabe Gazares was a former board member of the Cult Awareness Network (CAN)

Kidnapping or rescuing daughter?
National Post (Canada), September 25, 2006 - By Anne Marie Owens

A well-respected Ontario couple -- a family doctor and his teacher wife -- are at the centre of bizarre kidnapping allegations in a case that could spark debate about whether parents are justified in breaking the law if they believe their child is in peril.  Dr. Renato Brun Del Re, his wife, Lucie, their son and several friends will appear in court in Hamilton today on kidnapping charges for their desperate efforts to remove their daughter, who is now 23, from what they believe is a cult operating in downtown Hamilton.

The family, who say they implored police and government officials for help and even brought in a well-known cult deprogrammer from the United States, insist they were only doing their duty as devoted parents, intent on doing everything in their power to protect their daughter.

"You have to understand what cults do and how damaging they can be," Mrs. Brun Del Re, a 54-year-old high school teacher in Georgetown, said in an interview. "As for my daughter, when you hear from her directly that she's thinking of suicide, what kind of responsible parents would we be if we didn't do everything we could?"

Police have charged six people, including the Brun Del Res and their 25-year-old son, with charges of abduction and forcible confinement for their part in snatching a woman off the street in Hamilton in late December, forcing her into a van and bringing her back to the family home in Milton, about a half hour's drive north-east of the city.  The woman remained in the home for several days before she escaped and went to police. Her name has not yet been revealed in the court case and her mother will not disclose her name because she wants to protect her daughter's privacy.  Her family says she has returned to her former lifestyle in association with the Dominion Christian Centre, an evangelical Christian group that uses raucous, music-based services to draw wayward young adults and others to its base in one of the grittiest parts of the city's downtown core. 

One of the core issues raised by this case is whether concerns over a family member's safety can override an individual right to freedom of religion -- particularly when the person involved is an adult, not a child.    Pastor Peter Rigo, who founded the Dominion Christian Centre with his wife six years ago, has denied any allegations the church is a cult.  His upstart church has made headlines in the local newspaper for its unconventional practices, including its penchant for using debit machines for donations in lieu of traditional church collection envelopes.  When the church was profiled for its efforts to renovate one of the city's oldest buildings, the historic Hamilton Gas Light Building, the pastor described his flock this way: "People being saved, lives being completely transformed.... A family so hungry for real faith you couldn't beat them back from the table."

Mary Alice Chrnalogar, a U.S.-based consultant who has overseen scores of anti-cult interventions and written a handbook to assist families in breaking free from extremist religious groups, says she deplores the fact that this Ontario family has been charged for doing what they believed was best for their daughter.   "Nothing matters when your kid is in trouble. If I had a kid in a cult and was in the same place, I would do exactly the same as them," she said from her home in Tennessee. "This is a family that could be just like anyone else. The Canadian public should demand that they drop these charges -- don't put these poor parents through anything else."

She says she spoke with the family about intervention strategies, and even spoke with the woman at the centre of the alleged abduction, but she insists that she has nothing to do with involuntary deprogramming attempts. (Ms. Chrnalogar was among a group of prominent deprogrammers who became embroiled in nasty legal battles with Church of Scientology members, among others, over the lengths to which families could go in reclaiming their kin.)

Jeffrey Manishen, the Hamilton lawyer defending the Brun Del Re family, says he is collecting information about the Dominion Christian Centre from former members and others associated with the church to get a better sense of how the organization operates, who has left the church and what kinds of experiences they report.  "These are very serious charges," he says.  Mrs. Brun Del Re says her family has been through so much already that the court charges barely register as another concern.  She says the alienation occurred gradually between the family and her daughter, who went to Catholic schools and whom she describes as a very smart and spiritual girl who was trying to find her way as a young adult.  She even attended a couple of services at the church, at her daughter's request, but grew increasingly uncomfortable as her daughter began asking the family to move closer to the Hamilton church, and eventually cut off contact with her brother and other family members.  "God would never say, 'Don't see your family any more,' " Mrs. Brun Del Re said yesterday. "We pray for her.... When you believe that what you do is right, you have nothing to fear."
 

‘Make Jeff Lundgren die!’ 
N-E Ohio News-Herald, September 27, 2006  By Tracey Read

Karen Kowall will never forget Jan. 3, 1990. The young prosecutor was one of several law enforcement officials asked to investigate a tip that five bodies would be found in a Kirtland barn.   “I was in the barn that night. We thought it was some crazy caller at first,” she recalled, her voice a mixture of sorrow and anger. “But when we pulled up to the scene and saw all the TV cameras, we knew there must be something to it.”   Unfortunately, it was no sick joke.   The bodies of Dennis Avery, 49; his wife, Cheryl, 46; and their daughters, Trina, 15, Rebecca, 13, and Karen, 7, were found in makeshift graves, covered with quicklime, stones and dirt.       There was evidence to support the theory that the killings were connected to some type of religious cult activity, and an investigation revealed that Kirtland cult leader Jeffrey Lundgren and his followers were responsible. 

 Kowall was in Columbus Tuesday to ask the eight-member Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Parole Board to deny Lundgren clemency.  “At no time did Mr. Lundgren express any remorse for killing this family of five,” she said. “Jeffrey Lundgren is not a changed man. Forty-two of 43 judges who reviewed this case said the death penalty is an appropriate punishment.”

Lundgren, 56, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Oct. 24 for the April 17, 1989, murders, which were carried out execution-style. The victims were bound by duct tape and shot with a .45-caliber handgun Lundgren purchased by stealing Dennis Avery’s credit card.  Lundgren’s life could be spared if Gov. Bob Taft decides to commute his sentence to life in prison. The Parole Board will first review his case and is scheduled to notify Taft in writing of its recommendation Oct. 2.

At his trial, the cult leader said God told him to kill the Averys because they were sinners for not living in his home and following all his orders.  However, Lundgren has since realized he misinterpreted the Scripture and deserves another chance at life, said Henry Hilow, one of his attorneys.  “His extreme and deranged views prompted him to believe God told him to kill a family of five,” Hilow said. “This was albeit a brutal and senseless crime. But I submit to you it was a religious delusion based on false beliefs.”

“I should have saved the people and not sacrificed them,” Lundgren reportedly told Kovach. “I am a failure to those people. I am a wretched man.”   His attorney said those comments prove he is rehabilitated. But Kovach was not impressed.  “When I asked (Lundgren) how he felt knowing he slaughtered five people - including three children - he said, ‘Burdened.’ But I did not see any emotional remorse,” she said.  Lundgren’s victims moved from Missouri in 1987 to follow his teachings. After being invited to his farm on Route 6, they were led to the barn, where they were forced into a pit, shot and buried.

Lundgren started his no-name cult after he was dismissed as a senior guide at the Kirtland Temple managed by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.    He was one of 13 cult members arrested in the case. Lundgren’s former wife, Alice, is serving five life sentences for her role in the killings. Lundgren is now married to Kathryn Johnson, another former cult member who was not charged in the case.

Madison Township resident Renee Webster, Cheryl Avery’s niece, attended the hearing to plead with the board to carry out the execution. Webster read three letters from the victims’ family members who could not be at the hearing.   “Should he be executed? That is like saying, should the sun come up in the morning?” wrote Lance Bailey, Cheryl Avery’s brother. “Having Cheryl killed is as if I have had both legs taken off. It has taken me a long time to learn to walk. Learn to walk I have, but I will never walk the same again. For nine months we had no idea what had happened to the family. It was like they had vanished from the face of the earth.”  Another family member, Donald Bailey, wrote that killing Lundgren is the only thing that will give them closure.   “I personally have one great fear: that if his sentence were commuted to life in prison someday, someone will forget what he has done, and (he) may be turned loose on society,” Webster read from the letter. “It must be made certain that this can never happen. 

“The memories of his victims, the welfare of society and the demands of justice all dictate this final act of cleansing. My only regret is he has but one life to give. Give the families and all others affected the closure they so desperately need. “Make Jeff Lundgren die!”