Born in Cambridge, MA to a liberal couple that escaped the Conservative South, my parents raised me better than to become a Jehovah’s Witness. Funny thing was they got mixed up in it first.
While that is a story for another time, I myself had to go along as the third of five children in my family. Dad’s job transferred him to Texas and my mom worked fulltime herself, but eventually we found ourselves drinking the Kool-Aid of ambiguity intolerance and full-fledge belief that the Bible was literal fact and that salvation was found only by those who were “smart” enough to enter the confines of the Watchtower.
It’s weird how many people claim they fear children raised by two gay parents will grow up to be gay. They often never mention how two straight parents, a man and woman, manage to raise a gay son in the middle of other kids who turn out straight themselves. Despite the “validity” of that argument in the minds of some, my faithful Witness parents had a gay son, me. They never took me to a Gay Pride parade or played Cher on the stereo nor did they take me to even one musical play or let me pick out the drapes—and not that I ever wanted to do any of that stuff. Still I was definitely homosexual. Always knew I had these feelings since I can remember and have never been able to stir up the others.
But guess what? I was a good Witness boy. Despite a few crushes on some friends I had growing up at my local Kingdom Hall, I was a by-the-book Witness. I took it all very seriously. That Kool-Aid we all drank? I was the one stirring the pot and serving the line we all stood in to get our allotted dose.
MENSA, not Mensies
The problems between me and “Jehovah” of the Watchtower began in my teenage years when my grades suddenly slipped. I went from straight-A student to F. When my worried parents tried to find the problem, my school started testing me. Eventually they suggested I be given a WAIS testing by a (forbidden) psychologist. My school teachers and counselor wouldn’t explain why, but when they explained that only a doctor of psychology can give the test (and assured my Witness parents that a psychologist was not the same as psychiatrist), my folks consented.
No one told me what was happening, and only later would I learn that the WAIS was an IQ test for adults and older adolescents. I myself was at the point where my dad had recently given me the “birds and the bees” talk, and I told him I liked boys (well, I more asked him what would happen to me if I did like boys). While it was interesting that they were willing to take me to psychologist or even a psychiatrist for that, it was odd that here I was in a strange but very neat office facing a series of puzzle-like tests for what took an entire day.
So when the doctor discussed the results of the test and what it meant and mentioned MENSA, my mother later told me that she at first thought he said “mensies” and was about to faint from embarrassment that this unheard of test had revealed that her son “had gay.”
“Nope,” the doctor assured them. “But he is a genius, especially with languages.”
While MENSA was possible it was, of course, out of the question. And my parents, being faithful JWs to the core, followed the direction of the Faithful and Discreet Slave Class (it was a “class of people” them, not just the Governing Body) and ignored the pleas of teachers, educators, and the doctors to let me start college right away. Instead I was allowed to take a GED and aced it, of course.
But when you just turned 16 and don’t have anymore school to look forward to and too young to be hired for anything, what’s a secretly gay, ethnically Jewish, Jehovah’s Witness, what are you to do?
I Almost Drowned
They were over 40,000 people present when I was baptized at the Houston, Texas “Integrity Keepers Convention” of Jehovah’s Witnesses on July 27, 1985 in the Astrodome. My mouth opened when they dunked me and as they pulled me up I got a gulp of pool water that almost drowned me. The brother who ignored my gasps as I tried to stand and cry for help at the same time just smiled as he pat me on the back and said: “You just got a little water in you. You probably needed your evil insides cleaned out for Jehovah as well.”
But that was not the only time I almost drowned as a Jehovah’s Witnesses. The real drowning came next as the Reasoning from the Scriptures book was released, and a genius teenage mind got the stupid idea of looking up everything that was been cited and quoted.
I obtained the Society’s Kingdom Interlinear translation, taught myself Greek (with the help of cassette tapes I got on loan from my library but shamefully never returned—oops!). When I used my new-found knowledge of the language on a Bible study/return visit with an elder I was out in service with, the elder laughed at me and told me to stop fooling around. He would only later end up apologizing once he learned through another source that I could actually read and pronounce the language very well.
And because I could do that, I almost immediately learned that John 1.1 was not rendered correctly in the New World Translation. The silly argument about “anarthrous nouns” that littered the Watchtower publication in the 1980s was only half true. The last “theos” in John 1.1 is anarthrous, but so is practically every other occurrence of “theos” in that chapter and most of John, occurrences which are always rendered as “God” and never “god.”
When I asked elders to explain this I got the silliest replies, one of which was: “The last ‘theos’ is spelled differently than the one before it, ‘theon,’ meaning they both can’t be the same word.” When I explained that this is due to Greek being an inflectional language (the prefix and suffix of nouns will constantly change depending on the syntax but the root meaning isn’t changed), he just looked at me with disdain.
Unbeknownst to me Hebrew came natural to me. I didn’t know I was Jewish (not a real Jew—another long story) for a long time because growing up in Texas made me think I was just another Latin American. My family spoke something I took for granted was Spanish but my folks never, ever would go to a Spanish-speaking congregation or meeting. I once attempted to take a Spanish class and was laughed at by my Spanish teacher who said: “You speak the Spanish of the lower, ill-bred class.” As a result I dropped that class for wood shop.
It turned out that we spoke something called “Ladino.” This language is to Sephardic Jews what Yiddish is to Ashkenazi Jews (you will have to look up these terms if you can’t tell your Jews apart). Ladino is Spanish mixed with Arabic and, guess what, Hebrew! So when I started speaking Hebrew and asking more questions is when the real drowning started.
Burn the Witch! (It Knows Too Much)
It became apparent to me that other Bible translations that the Watchtower would criticize were not incorrect at all. It also was too clear that the New World Translation, while accurate in most places, was dishonest in all the controversial renderings—and atrocious in its renderings even when it was not wrong (this is not well-versed English, I remember telling others).
My learning of the languages caused suspicious by others in the congregation who began telling the elders that I was a liar and just looking for attention by making up stories that I could read these languages. At the time I was learning Ecclesiastical Latin and was being poked fun at too when I tried to prove it (it doesn’t always sound like what is written like other forms of Latin do).
So I got in trouble with the elders who felt they had to hold special meetings with me to see if I was fading away from “The Truth.” They would share a prepared little presentation with a few Scriptures with me and then ask me if I was having doubts that I was in the one and only true religion. I didn’t have doubts then, just questions about the NWT. But I assured them they were not the same. These meetings happened repeatedly and made my parents sad as we were marked as bad association—because I had a high IQ of all things.
And that’s when the horrible loneliness sunk in. My parents separated due to the pressure, my father becoming a drunk and blaming me during drunken rants that I was the cause of all the family’s problems because I was gay and ‘thought I was so smart!’ With my family against me and the congregation, and the fact that I was denying my sexuality by not even dating another male (I wouldn’t even let myself get too close to another male friend out of fear it would become something I couldn’t control), I felt I could no longer breathe.
So I left. I would not formally disassociate myself until 1999, but I left about 10 years before that. I would only later learn that the elders were close to having me disfellowshipped for apostasy because I was studying non-Witness materials and teaching what I learned from them to others as fact (the books I was using were called language guides and the JPS Hebrew text of the Old Testament—evil right?).
From Atheist to Philologist (What the Hell is a Philologist?)
Supporting myself as an IT professional, I decided to hate religion, the Bible, and especially the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I decided to try the “gay life,” moved to Atlanta, Georgia where a large gay population already existed, and started trying everything I could. I was a bit naïve, no very naïve, and so could never tell when someone was flirting with me or what and had no idea how to really have gay sex, so it was a very clumsy time in my life. I was very cute, however, so many guys overlooked a lot on the basis that I was a bit of what some called “eye-candy.” (I would learn the meaning of that term only after age was starting to steal my youthful looks away.)
I also joined a group of rational thinkers, but it didn’t last long. I took to them like I did the JWs when I was the one passing out the Kool-Aid for others to drink, and this was pointed out to me by the person who would later become my best friend (and still is to this day), Ted (not his real name).
Ted pointed out to me that my rationale against religion seemed more a projection of hatred than it did reason. I found that insulted and argued with him for an hour, almost punching him. He would approach me at a later meeting and we eventually got to speaking peacefully with one another. He introduced me to the term “ambiguity intolerance,” and I suddenly learned something new that applied to me and explained much of the Jehovah’s Witness experience.
While I won’t argue that the Witnesses are a cult, I have a theory that they are more of an impromptu ideology. They are like ISIS and the Imperial Japanese of World War II all wrapped up in a mixture of Adventist goo. They are the only ones who are right, all others must be converted or destroyed, and in the meantime all non-JWs are subject to ridicule and hatred. In the meantime we are taught to compartmentalize all things into two compartments: the Jehovah-Box or the Box of Satan’s Things. There is no in-between. Ambiguity is not tolerated, I must be right, all others wrong, and all others must be exposed to what I know.
Ted also made me realize that my gift for languages was being wasted and introduced me to the world of teaching (he is a professor himself) and learning how to be a real atheist.
While I did not remain atheist in the end, I did get the education my parents wouldn’t allow me to have. I learned theology, etymology, studied meteorology and finally chose to go into teaching philology.
Ted is still my best friend (and so are many from the now-defunct rational thinkers group that used to meet on Wednesdays and bank holidays), and I have even been consulted during the production of a popular interconfessional Bible translation that is now on the market.
And I’m openly gay and Jewish (I’m considered by some to be messianic because of my ancestral connection to the Nazarenes).
And there you go. I don’t oppose atheist views and even fight for their rights when I can.
For example, it’s not fair that I can say anything religious I want and put large menorahs around town each December without the slightest whimper from anyone but as soon as one of my atheist friends puts a billboard up that merely asks theists to at least consider using a little reason, why does that cause a ruckus? I’m worshiping burning bushes and chanukiahs they stay miraculously lit, and they are the crazy ones?
So there you have it. I thought I would share a little bit about myself to say HI. I’ve been insulted by both a theist and a non-theist on this board and almost left but then thought, hey they don’t know me. Maybe walls would come down if they learn a little more about me.
Oh, I have since come to appreciate Cher and musical theatre too.