When Tony Ortega announced his extended tour and that he was coming to Denver, I immediately wanted to do something to secure a location for him and make this a success. Having read The Unbreakable Miss Lovely, I knew this was a work that needed to get as wide a coverage as possible.
The Secular Hub is a group I belong to here in Denver, a sort of umbrella group for local atheists, skeptics, humanists and similar organizations that seek freedom from religion, enforcement of the separation of church and state, and who do volunteer work around town. They had hosted my talk about Scientology and were more than happy to host and promote Tony’s. Special shoutout to Amy Ruth McCleod who was helped setup everything, got the word around and was just the usual special and wonderful person she is in making this happen.
This was the first time I’ve ever done an interview like this and it was a lot of fun. We had a very nice attendance, probably around 70 people total. We did the presentation interview style where I asked Tony questions first, and then he took them from the audience. There was one point during the talk where a young woman spoke up who was quite emotional when Tony was talking about Scientology’s toxic disconnection policies. She talked about her family, who are in a Scientology school, and her parents who were still actively involved and how she did not know what to do. Other audience members were soon also in tears and Tony handled it beautifully. After the talk, she hooked up with some other exes in the audience and now will have some assistance in the future.
Everyone’s feedback following the event was very positive. There was even a question about whether there were plans to make the book into a movie, and I kept hearing afterwards what a good idea that was and what an amazing movie it would be. I couldn’t agree more.