Scott Terry. Cowboys, Armageddon, and the Truth: How a Gay Child was Saved from Religion. Lethe Press, 2012. Paperback. 288p. $18. 978-1-59021-366-7. 

Growing up in the Jehovah’s Witness religion was hard enough for Scott Terry, the unwanted child of a first marriage; growing up and realizing who he was as a person was harder still. This memoir is a powerful story not only about dealing with and escaping from abuse but also about coming to terms with being gay in an atmosphere that regarded it as both unnatural and sinful.

Terry grew up with almost no memory of his mother. He was raised in the home of his father Virgil and his stepmother “Fluffy,” a woman who despised both Terry and his sister and did everything to make their lives hell. That Terry did escape in the end is gratifying, but at times reading through the catalog of horrors that he had to undergo is unnerving in the extreme, from being forbidden to touch Fluffy’s television or take food without express permission to being physically abused and accused of lying when a school exam revealed that he needed glasses.

While certainly there are happy moments in his childhood, nearly all of them are in the company of relatives outside of his home. He suffered nothing but abuse from his stepmother in the presence of a father who refused to acknowledge that this abuse happened.

A constant thread throughout these recollections is the growing consciousness that he was gay. Terry prayed daily to be attracted to women instead of men but slowly grew to accept who he was as a person and find happiness and fulfillment as a gay man. Through this process, he had to break away from the faith of his childhood and from a father and step-siblings who still do not accept him as gay or as an ex-Witness (one who has left “the Truth”, as the Witnesses would say).

The only flaw with this work, if it can be said to have any, is that in certain places the reader might like more detail. For much of the work, the reader knows that Terry has two step-siblings but they only rarely appear in his narrative.

For those interested in biographies or memoirs, however, this is a work that is not to be missed. This work would be a valuable addition for many public libraries.

 
Reviewer: Brady Clemens