There are Easter eggs in every book I’ve ever written.

Ron Hubbard! Have others been surprised, too? You were even on the Sea Org ship with L. Mother Jones: I’ve followed your work for years, but I didn’t realize you spent 12 years in the Church of Scientology. Today, Bornstein says pretty much whatever she pleases about sex, gender, and Scientology-with fearless humor and a “fuck of a lot of love.” Thanks to the TV show South Park, which satirized Scientology for mainstream audiences, and the hope that this story might someday reach Bornstein’s daughter, who’s still a member of the church, she’s overcome her fear of retribution. What the lengthy title of Bornstein’s new memoir, A Queer and Pleasant Danger: The True Story of a Nice Jewish Boy Who Joins the Church of Scientology and Leaves Twelve Years Later to Become the Lovely Lady She Is Today(on sale May 1, 2012) doesn’t reveal is how scared she’s been to talk about her time in the church, until now.

Bornstein was excommunicated from the church in 1982 and branded a “subversive person.” In exile she’s found her voice as a liberated, post-op, transsexual lesbian icon-though, of course, Bornstein bucks labels like these every chance she gets. Born in 1948 on the Jersey Shore to a loving mother and a dad who was “a macho, macho man,” Bornstein left theater school in Massachusetts at the age of 22 on a spiritual journey that culminated in a 12-year stint in the Church of Scientology’s Sea Org, an elite group of members who were based on ships and functioned like a religious order. “I identify as neither male nor female…I’m neither straight nor gay,” wrote transgender performer and author Kate Bornstein in her seminal 1994 book, Gender Outlaw. Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Bornstein gender outlaw