Making an Escape

Scott Terry. Cowboys, Armageddon, and the Truth: How a Gay Child was Saved 

     from Religion. Lethe Press, 2012. PB. 288 p. $18. 978-1-59021-366-7.

Growing up in the Jehovah’s Witness religion was hard enough for Scott Terry as 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 of 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, being 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 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. From praying daily to be attracted to women instead of men, Terry grew to accept who he was as a person and find happiness and fulfillment as a gay man. In the 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. Regardless, for those interested in biographies or memoirs this is a work that is not to be missed, and for many public libraries this work would represent a valuable addition to their collection. 

This review was previously published in the newsletter of the American Library Association's GLBT Round Table. The author wishes to express his thanks to both the book's publisher and the Round Table for the review copy of this work.