John Travolta and Elisabeth Moss were front-and-center for Scientology birthday bash

We finally got around to looking at Scientology’s rah-rah press release about its 2024 L. Ron Hubbard birthday event, which took place on March 16 in Clearwater, Florida.

Old Ron, Scientology’s founder, would have been 113 this year if he hadn’t voluntarily left his body in 1986 to pursue his researches into the human mind in another part of the galaxy (or died of a stroke at 74, for you non-Scientologists).

Born on March 13, 1911, Ron is celebrated around that date every year, and the party returned this year after the pandemic to Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater. It was also broadcast live to Scientology centers around the world as current church leader David Miscavige outdid himself during the three and a half hour performance.

“As is befitting on this night of nights, we will present what LRH most wished for on his birthday: not only a Birthday Game that signifies EXPANSION, but also, the expansionist destiny as fueled by his Technology and all as manifested in Ideal Orgs,” Miscavige said. “But, why understate it? Truth is, you can mark tonight as a watershed milestone from which we will never look back. Moreover, it’s a milestone with exponential ramifications.”

Anyway, that’s what the church’s press release says, and we’re sure it was a gas of a time. But more importantly, for our purposes, Scientology’s news website posts photos of the crowd, and when we zoomed in on them we found something interesting.

There in the front row, in the center, were none other than John Travolta and a very pregnant Elisabeth Moss, standing side by side.

The last time the Birthday Event was held at Ruth Eckerd Hall, in 2019, Travolta was also in the front row, but as a Florida resident it’s not a long trip for him.

As for Moss, this is the first time we have ever spotted her at any of the major Scientology events (New Year’s, LRH Birthday, Maiden Voyage in June, IAS in October). Make of that what you will.

Here it is a little more blown up, and you can see how pregnant Moss is at the moment.

The woman in the red dress, by the way, is Trish Duggan, the world’s wealthiest Scientologist who has been in the news lately for coming to the financial aid of former president Donald Trump.

Is that Linda Moss, Elisabeth’s mother, between her and Trish? We’re not sure. But there’s no doubt that Travolta, Moss, and Duggan make up three of the most important Scientologists in the world.

So where’s Tom Cruise?

We didn’t see Top Gun in the crowd shots, but before the Daily Mail whips up a story about how that means Tom must be leaving Scientology, let’s remember that only last November Cruise not only showed up to press the flesh at the IAS gala in East Grinstead, England, but he flew to the event very visibly in his helicopter.

Anyway, we hope this tamps down some of the constant tabloid speculation about how all of these high-level Scientologists are all defecting or something. There was a lot of that about Travolta after the death of his wife Kelly Preston. But no, John is still front and center for David Miscavige on the big night to celebrate JT’s hero, L. Ron Hubbard.

We did see other interesting figures in the crowd, and we hope you can help us identify still more. We’ve marked a few other front row folks here.

And here’s the rest of the front row from the other side, with major donor Tom Cummins in the purple shirt at the end. Who else do you recognize?

We’re sure everyone had a wonderful time listening to David Miscavige for more than three hours.

And so we’ll give him the last word, from his speech that night:

“You are now experiencing what you could call a Golden Age of being a Scientologist and of winning Universal Freedom. Regardless of how you choose to wield your freedom,” he continued, “do take your own next step … so you will win, and we will all win.”

Hip, hip, hooray!

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Arbitration hearing moved back, and Jane Doe 1 has a new witness

This week, a hearing was scheduled in Jane Doe’s forced marriage lawsuit as Scientology is once again trying to derail a former Scientologist’s case by claiming they had signed a contract that obliges them to take their grievance to the church’s internal “religious arbitration.”

Judge Robert Broadbelt has now moved that hearing back to April 16, but in the meantime, Jane Doe’s team asked for an emergency hearing to ask the court to allow an affidavit from a “newly discovered key witness” that has evidence relevant to the arbitration question.

On the evening of March 20, 2024, Plaintiff had a discussion with the potential witness who shared, for the first time, information that would be pertinent to this Court’s ability to ascertain the truth of the facts asserted by Defendants in the Motion to Compel Arbitration. Today, on March 21, 2024, that potential witness, for the first time, committed to a willingness to submit an affidavit in support of Jane Doe’s Opposition to the Motion to Compel Arbitration. Without the ability to submit this key testimony to the Court, Plaintiff will suffer irreparable harm. She will be unable to provide this Court with a full set of facts upon which the Court may decide as to whether to relinquish jurisdiction over this matter in favor of Scientology arbitration.

We imagine that Scientology isn’t too happy about this, and it should be an interesting showdown in court on Monday. We can only hope the Court allows in the new affidavit, and that it makes a difference in the April 16 hearing!

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Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:

Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology

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