Just the other day, I was reading a Freemind's post from a reader who was having a difficult time with leaving The Truth. Karen wrote a really beautiful comment in response to Josh's story about growing up as a gay Witness. She wrote about feeling lonely, and how her life is filled with depression and how she has become a ghost of her former self as she struggles to leave the Witnesses behind, and her story reminded me of why I need to write this blog. It just seems important to help struggling people by giving them the assurance that life gets better when you get out of The Truth. It really does. Trust me.

Over the last year, I've had many conversations with ex-Witnesses who have struggled with their sexuality, and what I've learned is that while there are some people like me who found it really easy to leave The Truth, there are others who have abandoned the Kingdom Hall and for years afterwards, the Witness indoctrination still rattles around in their heads, causing a great deal of grief and confusion.

I am not one of those people. Leaving was never really a struggle for me. I didn't leave The Truth intentionally. I left by accident when I ran away from home at the age of 16 and unintentionally found myself facing the world without the distorted outlook of The Truth. Over time, I realized that the world only looks nasty when you're looking at it through the dirty windows of the Kingdom Hall, and that's how I slowly found my way out of The Truth. Sure, for a decade after leaving, the JW philosophy frequently interrupted my thoughts and it occasionally invades my life today, but still, I didn't really have a difficult time with leaving the Witnesses behind.

But it is sometimes painful for other people to leave and I really connected to Karen's heartfelt post. Karen has a fondness for body piercing, and the Witnesses have a really hard time with things they don't understand. Things like body piercing, just say. I find their mentality to be identical to that of Dana Carvey's Saturday Night Live character, the Church Lady, whose philosophy was, "If I don't understand it, it must be from Satan."

So after reading Karen's story, I started thinking about my past experiences with The Truth. Like in 1974 when my thirteen year old sister was given a mood ring by one of her worldly friends at school. She made the mistake of bringing it home, and my stepmother Fluffy freaked. Mood rings were a teenage rage at the time. They contained an artificial stone that changed colors with the changes in the wearer's body temperature. Fluffy didn't understand mood rings, and made my sister take it out to the garage and throw it in the garbage while berating her with a long conversation about Jehovah and Satan.

Or in 1978, at my age of 14, when I learned that all men with pierced ears were homosexuals or drug dealers. Apparently, gay men wore earrings in their left ears, and drug dealers in their right. Or maybe it was the other way around. I don't remember the specifics, but normal Bible-abiding male members of Jehovah's organization would never have dared to pierce their ears. Or any other body parts, for that matter. But in the 1970s when male earrings were first becoming fashionable, the rumor was that those men were gay, or evil, and I can't even begin to tell you how that concept was received in my head. At that age, I knew I was gay. I also knew that there was no way in hell that I would ever have a desire to get my parts pierced. Piercing and tattoos have never crossed my mind or been added to my "someday I'm going to do this" list of things, but at that time, I was really concerned about the assumed connection between homosexuality and ear piercing. It just got added to my expectation that I would someday have to wear a dress, because the way I heard it, all gay men like to wear dresses. All of that sounds unbelievably stupid today, and I'd like to point out that at my age of 45, I have never been interested in being intimate with a guy in a dress, nor have I ever had an urge to wear one myself. I've never found body art to be erotic, either. I'm just not wired that way.

But now that I am out of The Truth, I can absolutely and wholeheartedly endorse the right of someone else's life to be different from mine. I think Karen should feel free to go out and get as many piercings as she wants. She should have the freedom to enjoy her body art without feeling tormented by the knowledge that members of The Truth are "stumbling" over her decision.

Of course, I wouldn't feel this way if I was in The Truth. If I was still a Witness, I'd convince myself that all these unusual desires - including my being gay - must be from, oh I don't know...Satan?

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written by David Wharton , February 28, 2010

Wow Scott, your story is very inspiring. I am a gay man who was raised from birth as a JW. I left when I was about 17, just couldn't swallow the teachings, much to the chagrin of my still very much involved mother. I am now 50 years old, and it surprises me to find that to this day, when stressful situations occur, some of my old programming resurfaces and wreaks havoc on my emotions. I've been down the depression path, went to therapy etc., and am in general a pretty happy guy. My question is how do we truly purge the internal conflicts that such a religious upbringing instills in us? How did you know when you had done it? There are times when I feel like I'm ready to fly and never look back, and then something will happen, and it seems to knock me back into the mindset of my teens.

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written by Scott Terry , March 11, 2010

Hey David...thanks so much for the comment. I don't know how one ever purges the JW stuff from banging around in your head. It still invades my life today, although I no longer have feelings of guilt. Maybe that's why I get such a charge out of writing this blog....it's "payback"....LOL

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written by Bill , May 16, 2010

Ah, "What's past is prologue." Do we ever completely leave behind the things we experience, believe and learn in childhood? Those formative years become in various ways the foundation that the future house is built on.

Though I no longer choose to believe in a spirit individual with a horrific rap sheet named Satan -- I certainly can acknowledge the presence of evil in the world.

Though I've been away from the WTS for 15 years, it's taken a long time to become deprogrammed. I still have Watchtower flashbacks.

And whatever happened to mood rings? Never had one -- but I like the concept.

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