John Travolta’s decision to play Edna Turnblad in the upcoming musical film version of “Hairspray” –based on the stage musical, which was based on the original film–has “raised eyebrows of Scientology watchers,” reports MSNBC.com’s Scoop.

Made famous by cross-dressing legend Divine (on screen) and gay rights activist Harvey Fierstein (on stage), the role would not sit so well with Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, notes Rick Ross on Cultnews.com: “If Hubbard had historically had his way there would be no John Waters films in America and no gay actors to play the part of Edna Turnblad.”

According to a recent Rolling Stone article, Hubbard believed homosexuals “should be taken from the society as rapidly as possible… for here is the level of the contagion of immortality and the destruction of ethics. No social order will survive which does not remove these people from its midst.”

That very same Rolling Stone article is rumored to have lost Men’s Fitness–like Rolling Stone, published by Wenner Media–its May cover boy, Tom Cruise. New York Magazine reports that Cruise asked Rolling Stone to kill its Scientology story, and when that failed, he retaliated by bailing on the Men’s Fitness cover.