Growing up I heard an oft-repeated joke about Church of Christ members. As someone enters heaven, St. Peter leads him on a tour. The newly ascended asks St. Peter, “Who is that group in the corner talking amongst themselves?” St. Peter replies, “Shhh! Those are Church of Christ-ers. They think they are the only ones here!”
Garrard Conley was not raised in the Church of Christ. His destiny was being born into a family of Missionary Baptists. Few people outside the South realize the distinctions among the many fundamentalist strains, or denominations, in someone’s proposed faith. The differences usually come down to edicts that have been interpreted from the Bible as sacrosanct to that particular sect. It becomes very granular and can centered on seemingly inconsequential matters like dancing or preferred, approved forms of apparel. Further distinction applies to the “literal” interpretation of the word of God. It is black and white. No gray. Definitely no gay. That seems to be one concept on which they are united. It seems analogous to certain members of the U.S. Supreme Court that believe in a literal, originalist interpretation of the Constitution, without regard to nuance, history or culture.
In the author’s note, he states: “Sometimes I wish this had never happened. Sometimes I thank God it did.” As a 19-year-old, Conley entered a gay conversion therapy organization called Love in Action. It seems like a scam from the start. Participants are required to fill out endless applications and questionnaires, hope for acceptance into the program, fulfill a two-week initial trial, then be told how much intensive therapy will be required to “cure” them. The linguistic descriptions of the program make it sound like a discount version of Scientology. Who would participate in such a thing?
The answer would be someone like the author, the son of a pastor, raised in a deeply religious household, with little exposure to the broader culture and spectrum of humanity. Fundamentalists like to surround themselves with like-minded believers. That makes it easier to believe and follow whatever edicts their faith follows.
Themes surface that lead to Conley not being such a supplicant to these terms. He escaped through reading, video games/altered reality and nurtured “a vicariously lived life.” This is what probably saved him from the tortured future that confronts people ensnared in these conversions.
One more item from the book was telling. “This affliction makes me smarter. This disadvantage is what gives me my ambition. This is what first inspired me to write.” Despite describing his sexuality as an affliction and a disadvantage, it shows the first step in the long journey to acceptance, worthiness and a happy life.
It must have been cathartic (hackneyed term, forgive me) for Conley to write such a brutally honest memoir. He probably had some smart, kind and caring people who helped along the way.
Read the book and gain a better understanding of the role religion, geography, and culture play into many of our tribe.
Boy Erased: A Memoir
by Garrard Conley
Published by Riverhead Books
Garrard Conley’s fiction and nonfiction can be found in Time, Vice, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and on CNN.com, Buzzfeed, and elsewhere. He has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and Elizabeth Kostova Foundation writers’ conferences. A finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Boy Erased, Conley lives and teaches in Brooklyn, New York.
Boy Erased has been adapted into a major movie starring Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe and directed by Joel Edgerton and due to be released in November 2018
REVIEW: STEPHEN COYQueerguru Contributor STEPHEN COY has been an avid reader all his (very long) life ? and is finally putting his skills to good use. He lives in Provincetown full time with his husband Jim, having finally given up the bright lights of Boston and now haunts the streets mumbling to himself that no one reads anymore …
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