So I am writing my first blog entry on Christmas Day, 2008.  There’s an irony in there somewhere, but I don’t know what it is.  Christmas has no significance for me, other than a long holiday to relax and eat turkey.  In fact, the vast majority of my gay friends are atheist or agnostic at best. 

Many like me have soundly rejected all forms of religion after finding their way out of their childhood churches, particularly if they came from the Truth.   I’ll devote a future blog to that discussion, but at the moment, thoughts of my sister are on my mind. 

I always think of her on holidays, especially this one.  Sis and I grew up together as Witnesses, but we escaped while in our teens.  Not intentionally.  Neither of us made a conscious decision to leave, but we had parents who were direct immigrants from Hell.  Yeah I know, there’s no such thing as Hell, but let’s not go there for the moment.  I’ll just state that my sister and I left an abusive home when we were teenagers and only by that circumstance and sheer accident were we able to make it out of the Truth.  Once we were out, I gave up all belief in religion and my sister completely embraced the joy of exchanging Christmas gifts over a turkey dinner.   Christmas wasn’t about Jesus in her eyes.  It was all about the presents.

I’ve never really cared one way or the other about presents, having missed out on the holiday festivities while growing up.  I’ve never really bought into the Christmas ritual of wandering around a mall with a few million other people, searching for useless gifts for acquaintances who don’t really need anything…but my sister enjoyed Christmas for many years, and all was good.

That is, until she returned to the Witnesses.  That threw a huge kink in our relationship, but as weird as this sounds, I think the JW’s are good for her.   They wouldn’t be good for me, but I really try to be even handed in my portrayal of The Truth.  Not every ex-Witness I know is pissed about his/her wasted years in The Truth.  I’m not.  I left when I was 16, and The Truth was never part of my adult life until my sister returned to it.  I’m absolutely certain that The Truth is a pile of baloney, but I’m not angry about that.  I even know ex-Witnesses who look back favorably on their years in The Truth, and I like to think that there are some people on this planet who would be completely lost if it were not for mind-gripping forms of religion that tell you how to think.  In my sister’s case, the Witnesses fit her.  They complete her.  They give her a reason to get up in the morning.  They numb her brain with fantasies of the New Order and pet lions.  They tell her that life will be so much better in the New Order and that I am not serving Jehovah.   They tell her that I am not worthy of inclusion in her life because I am gay, and an apostate at that. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself by telling you that.  This story should start somewhere closer to the beginning, like maybe around 1971.  That’s when my sister and I were children and our Kingdom Hall worship was fixated on preparing for Armageddon.  We knew Armageddon would arrive in 1975.  We just knew it.  For several years, our Kingdom Hall meetings were focused on that event, and we watched sisters in the Ministerial School dress up in costume on Thursday evenings to practice how they might continue going door to door during persecution.  Our congregations were overrun with fears of persecution that was certain to precede Armageddon.

1971 is also about the time when it occurred to me that I wasn’t heterosexual.  I was only 7, so it’s not like I knew what that meant, but there were times when I knew I would never be attracted to girls.  I mean, I didn’t have wild visions of sex with boys.  I didn’t have the slightest clue what sex was about, but there were many times throughout childhood when I felt disconnected from the norm. 

For example:  My dad was cleaning swimming pools in southern California in 1971 and we frequented a particular supply store to buy chlorine.  They had two bathrooms in that store - one “bad” and one “good.”  The “bad” toilet was off limits to me, which is why I once went in.  It seemed obvious that there was a reason for that bathroom to be labeled bad, and I wanted to know what it was.  So I snuck in when my father wasn’t looking and discovered an entire room plastered with Playboy centerfolds.  There were all sorts of women, different colors and different poses taped to every wall, and I scanned them all.  In the end, I left that bathroom thinking that there was nothing on earth more boring than a naked woman, and I realized that things would have been much more interesting if the walls had been plastered with pictures of naked men instead.  Again, I didn’t know what I would do with that information, but I was quite certain that pictures of my own gender would have been a huge improvement.

But my early recognition of being gay is not the point of this first blog.  It is about my sister’s unfortunate but understandable return to The Truth. 

She and I have always had a very strong bond, forged while growing up with the parents from Hell.  In the early 90’s I was roping and riding bulls and she came to the Gay Rodeo to watch me compete.  I took her to the Pride Parade in San Francisco, and we went dancing together at the Rawhide Bar.  She watched me two-step around the dance floor with other men, and had a great time.  Everything was wonderful and free of conflict until she rejoined the Witnesses.  She went back to them after she married and found herself in a dumpy trailer with a growing collection of kids.  It was a particularly difficult time when her health was deteriorating and collection agencies were chasing her for unpaid medical bills.  Somewhere early into that struggle she realized that her life would never be different, not in this world, and she found it easy to again wrap herself in fantasies of the New Order.   She began looking forward to what the Witnesses promise.  They promise a life when she won’t be sick and obnoxious bill collectors won’t chase her, and my sister now wakes up every morning with the certainty that she is living in “the last days” and Armageddon is “coming soon.”

A few years ago she got totally wrapped up in the Lord of the Rings series.  We were on speaking terms at that time, and our conversations were often dominated by her predictions of “the last days” interspersed by dialogue from the Lord of the Rings.  I felt like we could just as well have lapsed into a children’s fairy tale of magic bean stalks and pumpkin carriage rides with silver slippers.  It was surreal to listen to her proclamations of “The end is near” and her assurances that “all the biblical prophesies are coming true” followed by, “The winds of Mordor are blowing in the east“  from The Lord of the Rings.

 I listened to her spout The Truth which sounds exactly as it did when I was a child, followed by her Hollywood movie fantasies.  In one conversation after The Twin Towers movie was released she once declared, “Isn’t the elf language just beautiful?” 

I said, “Sis….it isn’t real.  It’s a movie!  The elves don’t exist.”  But what I wanted to tell her was that all of her junk sounds the same to me.  Her discussions of Armageddon and pet lions sound identical to her fantasies of fairytale princesses and the winds of Mordor.   I can’t separate her religious beliefs from her fantasies.   They all sound the same to me.

So here I am today, writing a blog about my sister.  I love her dearly.  Our past is completely intertwined with abuse and childhood fantasies of when we might escape, and as an adult I now wonder what our lives might be if she could again extricate herself from the Witnesses.

 It won’t ever happen, I think.  She won’t ever leave.  She can’t even envision where she might escape to, and for that matter, I can’t either.   Her life isn’t ever going to change, and when Christmas rolls around next year, I’ll think of her again and wonder if we’re doomed to spend the rest of our lives ignoring each other.  I’ll think about the massive wall that’s built around her faith --- the wall that declares my wickedness and admonishes against my inclusion in her life.  A wall that can’t come down unless I find a few magic beans that sprout into a giant bean stalk and carry me to a far away land with little rainbow pills that result in Playboy giving me a hard-on. 

Or perhaps I should just give her a call and say, “Sure, Sis.  The elf language is beautiful and the winds of Mordor are blowing.  And I’m not gay anymore.  And we’ll all have a pet lion in the New Order.”

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written by Gina , May 16, 2009

Your story is making me laugh and cry. My BIL is gay and his family had some connection to the Witnesses growing up, not a firm one, but enough to know he would never fit in. He told me that he knew he was gay at around 9 or 10 years old, and he knew because he had no attraction to them, but men were "pretty" or attractive to him.

I don't know any exceptions to that inevitable realization of attraction as regards the gay men I've known over the years, (and because I frequently blog on this subject, I hear from a lot of them) and I certainly can't find anything valid that refutes it.

I was "raised" as a Witness, although my parents never got into it to the degree that some do.
I do kind of do the Christian thing, my own thinking, no church, but I'm attracted to religion or at least the idea of spirituality. Amazing, after the JW mind diddle. But, a lot of my friends are atheists and agnostics who helped me out of the WTS BS.
I think they give me balance.
But, interesting story, I also notice that many JWs I knew are FASCINATED by Star Trek, LOTR and I think it's because of what Joseph Campbell, the mythology professor said about these high fantasies. They're all modern day re-tellings of the Christ story.
It's a very old one in human myth, and has significant personal power. I simply think that Christ is the most evolved or popular version of it, at least in our times.
Some JWs are very happy in it, but I was MISERABLE because I'm not a black and white, do's and don'ts sort by nature.
And, well, I have thoughts, and they get in the way of being fed predigested spiritual pap. LOL

Have a good one!

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written by Scott , May 18, 2009

Hi Gina...thanks so much for the comment. I think I'll devote some of the future blog topics towards the early "gay identity" issue. BTW...what is the url for your blog? I'd be curious to read it.
Thanks!

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written by Jaco , August 13, 2009

Hi, Scott

I just read your post. As a student majoring in psychology, especially sexual development and behaviour, I do relate to much of what you're writing.

I admire your honesty and the accurate expressions of your thoughts. What I do notice, though, is a very nihilistic mood to your writing. I have exited from the Watchtower myself, and did so voluntarily. Resolving psychological hurts is not easy, but still very possible and rewarding. Feeling being surrendered to the mercies of life is not a pleasant or productive state to be in. Even outside the Watchtower life can and does have a purpose - one so much more achievable without the constraints imposed upon one by an organization.

I recommend the site www.narth.org

All the best,

Jaco

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