Is he or isn’t he? The rumors of John Travolta being gay or bisexual have circulated the rumor mill for many years.
Now, an ex-Scientology officer, claims he witnessed Travolta kissing a male masseur in his newly written memoir.
Mike Rinder, who was in the top ranks when he left the organization in 2007, writes in “A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology” that he was assigned to help the married Travolta, now 68, with “some public relations issues” when he allegedly witnessed the kiss.
Tinder remembers talking to Travolta in a hotel suite. While they spoke, Travolta’s masseur, clad in a bathrobe, walked into the room and kissed the actor on the mouth.
“‘I’ll be in soon,’ John said as the masseur headed toward the bedroom,” Rinder writes. “That was pretty shocking, right in front of a senior Scientology official. It was just not done. I guess it was indicative of the trust he placed on me.”
Rinder alleges he was brought in by the church to help squash talk about Travolta’s love life.
“Since the beginning of the ’90s, Travolta had been hounded by stories from various alleged male lovers, including one of his former pilots as well as a porn star,” Rinder writes. “Travolta was even contacted by the National Enquirer team about an upcoming story.”
“Realizing the potential PR damage a story of gay sex would have on the perfect Scientology couple of John and Kelly [Preston, Travolta’s then-wife, who passed away in 2020], we dug up dirt on the sources and threatened the media with lawsuits,” Rinder writes.
Rinder, the Australian-born co-host of “Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath,” writes that the church claims not to be anti-gay. However, the threat of a story describing a Scientologist as gay would cause panic internally because for a Scientologist, not being ‘cured’ of homosexuality would indicate, that the tech doesn’t work.
Rinder also writes in his memoir, “Much has been made of John’s sexuality and whatever the realities of his sexual orientation may be, I firmly believe he would be more open about it, were not for the stigma he feels due to his strong belief in Scientology.”
A spokesperson for Scientology clapped back, “Mike Rinder is an inveterate liar who seeks to profit from his dishonesty … He supports himself by orchestrating the harassment of his former Church and its leader through false police reports, incendiary propaganda and fraudulent media stories.”
