My "guard tower". Find out lesbian among Jehovah's Witnesses

Dialogue of Mattia, volunteer of the Gionata project, with Anna Salvemini*

AfterIrene meeting with Alessandro Reda, the boy homosexual of the Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, from which he now came out to be himself finally without obligations and without masks, I also had the opportunity to get to know Anna, a lesbian woman and Jehovah's witness who told me how the lesbian being lives and to be part of the Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Hi Anna, do you present briefly? Who are you, what do you do in life?

My name is Anna and teaching in a middle school in Pesaro. Leaving Puglia, my region of origin, was a choice dictated not only by work reasons but also by the awareness that, far from my family, I would have felt more free to practice the religion I had joined with enthusiasm, choosing to baptize myself as a Jehovah's witness at the age of 22.

Who are Jehovah's witnesses and why they are called Like this?

Jehovah's Witnesses are a religious movement of Adventist derivation that preaches the advent of the Kingdom of God on earth. The witnesses firmly believe that the kingdom of God will take control of human affairs and establish a new world order.
Each witness has a moral duty to testify to as many people as possible about this divine purpose. By doing this they feel to sanctify the name of God, Jehovah, and to show love to human beings, tearing them to the eternal destruction that awaits those who reject the message they brought.
To join the Jehovah's Witnesses, a series of moral and religious requirements must be met. Sexual behavior is governed by a very austere code of rules. Patriarchal culture is heavily reflected on relations between genres. The submission of the woman to whom they are also precluded many theocratic career opportunities offered to men is constantly encouraged.

Unfortunately still today in society, homosexual people are still discriminated against, although fortunately the company is slowly changing. Based on your life experience, when did you understand you are homosexual?

When I attended the high school I took a crush on my peer who went to another section. However, I didn't think I was homosexual. I didn't give myself a label. The contacts with Jehovah's Witnesses, which occurred when I was 17, had the effect of discouraging and censoring the exploration of my identity and diverting my attention to issues totally estimated by corporeality. Towards some sisters of faith I felt an attraction that I interpreted as admiration and desire for emulation. I wanted to please them and conquer their affection.
After about 15 years spent among Jehovah's Witnesses I began to have a more precise awareness of my emotional orientation. Decisive was a short holiday spent together with a sister of faith. I wanted to relive the emotions felt at that time. Later I invited her to come and see me and I talked to her about my desire to follow her as a work partner in the places where she would go to preach. He seemed happy to hear it. A few months later I invited her to stay with me again.
The same evening of his arrival he told me that he was engaged and that he would soon get married. I lived in it as an atrocious betrayal but my feelings were unconfessable, inadmissible among Jehovah's Witnesses. I remember that my loss to the news of the engagement even aroused the hilarity of the bystanders.

Did you talk about it immediately with someone? (in the family, with friends, with the Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses)? Did you immediately make the classic coming out?

I thought that making coming out open out would serve shortly. He would not have exonerated me from keeping faith with the commitment taken with my baptism as a Jehovah's Witness. The witnesses who feel they have "homosexual tendencies" is recommended to seek spiritual help at the elderly of the Congregation. Thus I decided to bring the elderly closer to them the pain and the profound discomfort that I felt every time in the pages of the guard tower and in the speeches listened to in the kingdom room was announced the eternal destruction of homosexuals and their cancellation from the face of the land decreed by God. Which were the opinions that the elderly had made themselves on me, from that moment I began to receive a long series of pastoral visits to the point of view on homosexuality in line with that of the management body of Jehovah's witnesses.
At the same time my intervention spaces were drastically limited during the congregation meetings. These punitive measures put in place towards me embittered me, however I accepted this psychological torture in the hope of assisting the signals of a change in the official position on homosexuality one day. The prospect of being expelled from the congregation for apostasy anguished me.

How do you consider homosexual people's witnesses?

For Jehovah's Witnesses, the only sexual orientation with which God has endowed human beings is the heterosexual one. Homosexuality and transsexuality are considered a deviation from the norm established by God and, like any other physical and moral imperfection, a consequence of Adamic sin. Although today the management body of Jehovah's witnesses is willing to admit that homosexuality is not the result of a deliberate choice by the individual, he believes that this "sinful tendency", even if deeply rooted, can be kept under control with the help of the Spirit of God. Those who do not fight it with all their forces therefore sin against God.
Homosexuality is cataloged between the various forms of "sexual immorality" like adultery, pedophilia and bestiality. I clearly remember having read in the magazine "Torre del Guardia" that under the domain of the kingdom of God no human being will feel more inclinations more and then it will no longer be necessary to have to commit himself in a strenuous inner combat.
In publications, especially those for internal use, it is reiterated insistently that in the people of Jehovah there is no space for those who want to promote a more tolerant point of view on homosexuality since it is God himself who excludes who practice it from his kingdom.

In the Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses there were episodes of homophobia?

Jehovah's witnesses sincerely consider they are not homophobic since they do not act physical violence towards homosexuals and do not resort to offensive appellations to designate them. They claim to impart the LGBTI people impartial since they do not hold back from bringing to them the good news of the kingdom of God and by imparting their biblical education.
The expressions of disgust and contempt for homosexual people also used by some members of the executive body, are justified with the urgency to put a brake on tolerance increasingly widespread on a social level towards "alternative lifestyles".
The publications of the witnesses often report expressions of unprecedented verbal violence against homosexuals, defined as "emppi and wicked" and, as such, "deserving of death" like all those who support civil rights and same-sex marriages. The executive body also takes care of exhorting the faithful to rejoice in this perspective and to be grateful for the privilege of knowing the clear point of view of God on sex.
This in my case instead had the effect of hearing suffering, since I felt forced to suffocate my feelings. I lived a paradoxical situation: my affectivity had no right of citizenship within my religious community, but I should have experienced gratitude for this and commit myself to teaching other homosexuals to do the same!
The claims of greater rights and visibility by LGBTI people is looked at with indignation by Jehovah's Witnesses and is considered a proof of the proximity of the end of this world governed by Satan. Sympizing with the movements for the civil rights of LGBTI people is considered inadmissible for a witness and is sufficient reason to be expelled from the congregation. This is what happened to me too, after my membership at the Arcigay.

How do you live your faith today? What relationship do you have with the Holy Scripture? Do you currently consider yourself a Jehovah's Witness?

I still look for dialogue with God even if I believe in a different way than before. It is a more problematic faith, it no longer gives me the answer to any question but pushes me to comparison with other visions of life and the world. I don't think about having the truth anymore. I continue to read the Bible every day, the book that has influenced my life more than any other.
When I speak with God I continue to call him Jehovah, but only when I'm alone. The God in whom I believe is different from what Jehovah's witnesses preach. For about two years I have been attending the Waldensian Church because I think it is the one that better than others responds to my need for justice and equality.
The Waldensian community with which I participate in the cult is led by a pastora. I am smiling if I think that for twenty years I was part of a religious organization in which women were prevented from teaching the community publicly.
In the Church I attend, I met other lesbians who live their affectivity in harmony with their faith serenely. Although I have not yet formalized the adhesion to the Valdese Church, Pastora has invited me to support the monitors during Sunday school. I am very grateful to her for this demonstration of trust towards me.

Do you know other homosexuals who currently attend the congregation?

Yes, in the Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses I belonged there was another gay boy. He was aware of his identity but was not willing to make any concession. He had a very high degree of internalized homophobia. He felt repulsion and instinctive and irrational anger towards homosexuals who lived his identity freely.
Although he carried out with zeal the assignment of full -time evangelizer and was held in high regard by the other members of the congregation, he had a very scarce self -esteem. In the end he made the decision to contact a psychologist. He thought of finding one who was also a witness of Jehovah and who lived at 150 kilometers away.

What do you expect from religions for the future?

To religions I would ask to teach to love the infinite variety in which human nature is expressed and to welcome it as a reflection of the divine. To all those who recognize themselves in a religion I would ask not to let loyalty to an ideology or organization becomes more important than the human being.

* Soon Anna will be a guest live in my radio column "A coffee with Mattia”Broadcast every Monday from 20 to 21.30 on www.radiospeed.it