While everyone is right about freedom of religion and separation of church and state, that’s only part of the problem.
Scientology is also very aggressive with lawsuits and other bad faith shenanigans. They made the IRS back down by flooding them with an obscene amount of lawsuits. Scientology has a shit ton of money, they can afford to overpower other people in court.
They also own a lot of land. Clearwater, Florida is one example. They bought out pretty much the entirety of downtown Clearwater. Built the courthouse, own a lot of the businesses there, etc. They also have a cruise ship they keep in international waters and can do whatever they want out there. And it’s worse than you’re thinking. They own land/towns on a lot of other places too .
💀
Too bad they don’t own anti-aircraft weapons!
🎵 THIS IS THE GREATEST PLAAAAAN! 🎵 (helicopter closes in)
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A lot of people here mentioning scientology’s history of litigation and taking down the IRS and while that’s true, I also think it’s worth mentioning Waco. After the Waco seige the government lost a LOT of interest in going anywhere near cults. It’s just a giant mess that nobody wants to put their ass on the line to deal with. When you’re dealing with fanatics you never know what crazy shit is going to go down. As long as they aren’t hurting people outside of their cult itself, many politicians would sooner keep away from them and avoid having something backfire. That’s not to say that they’re right to think that way. It’s just the truth. Everything changed after Waco. Before Waco, the government was actually trying to do more about cults. The Jonestown massacre involved a sitting congressman getting gunned down. All the IRS shit with the scientologists went down before Waco too. IMO, Waco is the most important turning point to look at to understand why the government won’t touch cults anymore.
They’re dying thankfully, thanks to the internet (which they themselves admitted) and South Park (lol) their numbers went from the tens of thousands to thousands. Hell in some ppl places theres only like 80 something people for an entire state.
I didn’t know this, this is good news!
Sadly, most of them are rich and/or lawyers. So even though they’re outnumbered by many African tribal religions, I don’t expect them to lose influence as fast as followers.
Wish jehovahs witnesses would follow as well
Religion in general is globally in decline, so eventually that should happen
1st amendment and the fear that any pushback on freedom of religion could be applied to Christians.
They’re lawyered to hell. And they’re aggressive. For fuck sakes they even raided an fbi office and stole all the evidence and no one did a damned thing about it. They have enough money to be able to operate above the law, and certainly above any separation of church and state. Our laws operate on a level that allows them to litigate themselves out of messes, regardless of guilt or innocence, because they have the money to afford people to exploit loopholes, not because they aren’t guilty.
Start here (Behind the Bastards podcast on L. Ron Hubbard):
Real answer: Religion in the United States is protected by Amendment I of their constitution. There isn’t much the Government can do without infringing on or appearing to infringe on this protection.
Money
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With all the mess going on in this country right now, I don’t know that anyone wants to also add on the epic shit-show that would inevitably result from the government trying to mess with religion - even the weird cults.
They did try once. Scientology proved to be more powerful.
They’re a very small issue in the grand scheme of things
Also, they are big enough and have tabs and famous enough people that they can bribe some C list politicians/judicial people to keep a low profile under the grand scheme of things, just as you said it.
Yeah and that’s all very, very minor
Government is made of politicians.
Most politicians are made of fear.
Here: fear of having shit thrown at them, by the Sc. and their lawyers, and maybe some Hollywood actors too.
Lobbying, don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
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