Minnesota ex-gay activist Janet Boynes and the antigay Parents Action League suffered a setback today, in their opposition to school antibullying policies that expressly protect sexual minorities.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, bullied students, the federal government, and Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin school district — the state’s largest — have tentatively settled lawsuits accusing the district of violating state and federal laws as well as students’ constitutional and human rights.
The SPLC, National Center for Lesbian Rights, and two law firms sued the district last year on behalf of five students, alleging that the district protected antigay harassment through a so-called “neutrality” policy, which forbade faculty from speaking out in defense of LGBT students and repudiating antigay bigotry.
Today’s tentative settlement would require the school district to take numerous steps to eliminate and prevent antigay harassment.
This is exactly what ex-gay activist Janet Boynes didn’t want.
In August 2011, Boynes spoke for the district’s antigay supporters. In a letter to a local newspaper, reprinted by the Minnesota Independent, Boynes contended that “If we really care about our young people, we will do everything to steer them away from homosexuality and transgenderism, and the unhealthy sexual acts that are a part of these lifestyles.”
In December, according to the Twin Cities Daily Planet, Boynes told the school board that eliminating the gag policy on antigay bullying would lead to discussions in classrooms about LGBT issues and permit pro-equality activists to “force an acceptance of this behavior on kids and this school district.”
In January, according to CityPages, Boynes went still further — supporting the Parents Action League as it demanded that the schools distribute antigay and ex-gay literature; promote conversion therapy on the district’s web site; require nurses and guidance counselors to “ex-gay” training; and equate same-sex orientation with disorder and disease.
We await Boynes’ formal response to the settlement. Meantime, tonight Boynes tweeted to Fox News contributor Frank Shelton Jr. “Why won’t Fox news put us on there show?” In response to another fan, Boynes tweeted, “She [Michele Bachmann] will always be my friend!!”
In summer 2011, Truth Wins Out infiltrated Bachmann & Associates to see if the clinic’s therapists practiced “ex-gay” (aka reparative) therapy. We launched this operation after presidential candidate Michele Bachmann’s husband, Marcus, claimed that his business did not take part in the discredited practice of converting homosexuals into heterosexuals. TWO’s investigation discovered incontrovertible evidence that “ex-gay” therapy did, in fact, occur at Bachmann & Associates.
Included in our trove of evidencewasa notorious book by Janet Boynes, Called Out: A Former Lesbians Discovery of Freedom, stacked high and sold at the clinic. Prominently displayed above the pile of books was a personal endorsement from Marcus Bachmann:
“Janet is a friend. I recommend this book as she speaks to the heart of the matter and gives practical insights of truth to set people free. – Marcus Bachmann, PhD”
Boynes reciprocated the love in the “Acknowledgments” section of her book:
“Marcus and Michele, when we met, our friendship was instant, and you never left my side when things got tough. To watch your walk with God gives me strength, courage, and hope.”
In 2005, Marcus Bachmann gave a presentation, “The Truth About the Homosexual Agenda,” at the “Minnesota Pastors’ Summit.” The City Pages reported that Boynes was one of three “ex-gay” activists Bachmann trotted up on-stage during his PowerPoint.
While at the pulpit, Boynes said, “If I was born gay, then I’ll have to be born again.” An eyewitness said, “The crowd went crazy,” when she delivered her signature line.
Given her close ties to the Bachmann family, many people are clamoring to know: Who is Janet Boynes?
The quick answer is that she is the Religious Right’s “ex-gay” du jour, embraced by leaders of Southern Poverty Law Center-certified hate groups such as Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, and Peter LaBarbera, founder of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality. Anti-gay activists from Bishop Harry Jackson to Gary Bauer tout her alleged conversion as proof that sexual orientation can be changed. In her book, Boynes claims that she met George W. Bush at a fundraiser in 2006 and that the president “told me I was a beautiful person.” (p. 67)
Boynes is also the Exodus International contact person for Living Word Christian Center, located in Brooklyn Park, MN. For the unacquainted, Exodus in the largest “ex-gay” organization in the world and is dedicated to, “Freedom from Homosexuality through Jesus Christ.”
The Religious Right’s “ex-gay” flavor of the moment (many others have either come out or been scandalized) is also the founder of Janet Boynes Ministries, which runs a prayer line and support group. It appears that Boynes is also the driving force behind the National Ex-Gay Educators’ Caucus, a politicized anti-gay front group that hosts a booth each year at the National Education Association’s annual meeting. The goal of this campaign is to promote the notion that “people deserve to hear all the facts so they can make their own decisions [on sexual conversion]” and to let students know that “for those who truly want change, change is possible.”
Recently, Boynes has become a media darling – she graced the cover of Charisma magazine in June and her tale of conversion was featured in a much-maligned Lisa Ling special on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) in March. The entrepreneurial Boynes was also interviewed on HLN’s Dr. Drew Show in April. Rev. Pat Robertson’s 700 Club aired a segment in which they called her alleged transformation “an amazing story.”
Given her level of celebrity and access to powerful political connections, one would think that Boynes might be an impressive individual of great accomplishment.
On the Oprah Winfrey Network show, Our America with Lisa Ling, Boynes touted her “ex-gay” ministry. Yet, the one person she put forth as a success story — Christian — was super-gay and admitted to still being attracted to men.
Boynes ministry is a joke that confuses stereotypes with legitimate science. She thinks putting on a dress (or making Christian take off his) makes a person heterosexual.
This is both a distortion of homosexuality and a parody of heterosexuality.
The bottom line is that Boynes is about nothing more than peddling her book. If she had real success stories to show — than why weren’t they featured on national TV?
Maybe, because Boynes is a charlatan and a false for profit prophet?
Of course, Boynes’ failure is not unique at Exodus International. The entire “ex-gay” program is based on changing behavior through bizarre techniques. It has nothing to do with genuinely altering one’s sexual orientation, as John Aravosis eloquently pointed out on America Blog. According to Aravosis:
So basically these are celibacy groups. Nothing more. But they call themselves “ex-gay” simply for political reasons, since it helps them undermine our civil rights. Really pitiful. And it again begs the question of why these admitted phonies are permitted to have an iPhone app when hate groups who targets Jews, blacks and other minorities are not permitted apps?
Tonight’s presentation of “Pray Away the Gay?” on the Oprah Winfrey Network was not horrible — it was respectful and sensitive to all sides — but nor was it balanced.
The first 40 minutes of the program were devoted largely to journalist Lisa Ling’s encounters with a series of ex-gays who admitted facing long struggles against their sexual orientation. Her interactions were frequently supervised and steered by Exodus personnel.
The final 20 minutes, and portions of a live call-in program that followed, portrayed sexual-minority people of faith. Among them were Exodus co-founder Michael Bussee, his same-sex partner, and participants in a gay-affirming Christian camp affiliated with The Naming Project — living ordinary lives with integrity.
As far as they went, the documentary and call-in show portrayed both gay Christians and ex-gays with sensitivity. And we’re grateful to Bussee and The Naming Project for presenting viewers with a positive alternative to the Exodus lifestyle of shame, denial, and deceit.
But throughout the program and call-in show, no references were made to Exodus’ ongoing political and social warfare against sexual minorities. The result for viewers was a false impression that Exodus minds its own business and engages in no dishonesty, harassment, or violence toward gay people.
The program’s first segment prominently featured Exodus’ Minnesota leader Janet Boynes, who is simultaneously the liaison of an Exodus-affiliated church and the head of a self-named shell organization, Janet Boynes Ministries, which houses Boynes’ associations with antigay political extremists. When antigay people seek an Exodus-affiliated church in Minnesota, Exodus refers them to Boynes and just a few other member activists.
On Ling’s program, Boynes rationalized the work of local ex-gay ministries. Boynes served as Ling’s liaison to a young and unhappy ex-gay man named Christian.
In a live call-in program that followed the documentary, callers were given no opportunity to identify and question Boynes’ political activism. Nor was any mention made of Exodus’ misrepresentation of scientists and their studies of sexual orientation. And no references were made to Exodus’ role in co-launching the Uganda campaign for a kill-the-gays law.
Lisa Ling is a sincere and professional woman who is sympathetic to gay people of faith and the cause of equality. However, she appears to have sold out journalistic objectivity in order to obtain the cooperation of Exodus, which has become reluctant in recent years to talk with media representatives that question its political warfare.
Journalist Lisa Ling says she will ask the question, “Can you be gay and Christian?” tonight starting at 10 p.m. EST on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
Numerous churches and organizations settled that question in the affirmative years ago — even some Exodus International and Focus on the Family operatives answer in the affirmative. And gay people of faith certainly deserve to have their voices aired on mass media channels whose religious programming is dominated by conservative superstition.
So we must ask: Is it appropriate to profile gay Christians in this fashion — namely, to overshadow their personal religious journeys with the antigay meme, “Pray Away the Gay?” and then to grant the tired fundamentalist gays-belong-in-hell meme new legitimacy?
Why single out gay Christians with that question, at a time when Exodus International leaders and their allies have worked in Uganda to conduct unholy persecution of sexual minorities?
Shouldn’t the question really be, “Can one be ‘ex-gay’ and Christian”?
Tonight’s programming will interview gay Christians and their supporters. But video previews of the program indicate the programming will focus substantial free airtime upon Exodus International president Alan Chambers, a political activist whose dishonesty has been well-documented on this site. He measures Christian “compassion” and “Biblical truth” by one’s willingness to distort accepted science, oppose anti-bullying programs in schools, boast of one’s religious and moral superiority, ostracize minorities, and stigmatize others for personal gain.
If tonight’s programming is balanced and humane, then it will invite Exodus International to apologize for Exodus Church Association member Janet Boynes’ work alongside Bradlee Dean (a kill-the-gays youth punk rocker/preacher) in Minnesota.
And it will confront Exodus with the Ugandans whose friends and family members have been killed as a result of Exodus board member Don Schmierer’s participation in the Uganda campaign to launch a kill-the-gays law.
That’s IF the programming is balanced. If not, there is a chance that we may see more free airtime and false equivalency granted to advocates of prejudice, factual untruth, social and religious schism, and harassment of demographic minorities.
As resistance in Minnesota rises against Christian Right harassment in the public schools, Exodus International activist Janet Boynes is stepping up to lead Minnesota social conservatives in a new round of struggle to defame, shame, and silence sexual-minority youth.
Her October 14 Young Adult Prayer Call is timed to thwart local and national media attention that has fallen upon school-sponsored antigay violence in the the Anoka-Hennepin School District — Minnesota’s largest school district. Under leadership and pressure from religious conservatives, Anoka-Hennepin schools stubbornly refuse to enact anti-bullying programs that specifically address and oppose antigay violence. That violence has reached endemic proportions and resulted in suicides among local youth, prompting negative reviews in the media.
Boynes’ pro-bully “Prayer Call” also occurs just as Exodus International is patting itself on the back for stepping back from the Day of Truth, an arguably less militant effort to sanctify school bullies and mobilize parents against anti-bullying programs.
Who is Janet Boynes?
Boynes’ life story is the prototypical ex-gay example of an individual who is abused as a child, who misguidedly equates the abuse with sexual attraction (and temporary attraction with full-blown orientation), and who then egocentrically projects her self-misdiagnosis upon anyone who was born or predisposed as an infant to full-blown same-sex orientation.
Since 2006, Boynes and Bachmann have piggybacked their rise to fame upon one another. Just as the Pope once sold indulgences to Europe’s finest in exchange for access to power, Boynes has exploited Bachmann for political support while Bachmann has exploited Boynes for local religious support and access to conservative African-Americans. Boynes has also used the Christian Right’s “Ex-Gay Educators Caucus” to demand that the National Education Association and nation’s teachers teach discredited ex-gay myths to public-school students.
Since last year, Boynes has periodically shared Bachmann’s soapbox with Christian rocker Bradlee Dean, another Bachmann sidekick who became infamous this year when the Minnesota Independent exposed his speeches to youth audiences affirming Islam’s official policy of genocide against gays.
Boynes uses her non-profit ministry to fill her supporters’ minds with visions of gay men as little more than diseased anuses — bodily organs that are unworthy of constitutional equality. According to the Minnesota Independent, Boynes said on March 2: “Same-sex marriage and interracial marriages have nothing in common. … Allowing a black woman and a white man to marry does not change the definition of marriage. However allowing two men and two women to marry would fundamentally change the definition.”
Boynes’ bitter and sexually obsessed political battles have drawn affection from her partners in Exodus International.
Randy Thomas fawns over her book “Called Out,” which rationalizes an ex-gay journey toward freedom-from-freedom — freedom especially from the obligation to characterize sexuality, people of faith, political dissent, and constitutional law with accuracy and integrity.
Exodus Global Alliance sees Boynes as a ticket to credibility among antigay groups globally. Exodus affiliates in Barbados favor long-term imprisonment for LGBT citizens, while Exodus continues to work in Africa to divide the families of LGBT people and fill their minds with blame games over which relative or whose demons caused a loved one’s homosexuality. Boynes’ testimony characterizes LGBT people as demon-possessed — thereby legitimizing “spiritual warfare”: Exodus’ code phrase for defamation, suppression, imprisonment, and violence.
Janet Boynes’ October 14 “prayer call” is not a promotion of Christian spirituality among youth: It is the latest step up in a campaign of emotional, physical, and spiritual abuse against sexual-minority youth.
Minnesota “ex-gay” activist Janet Boynes is starting a “Young Adult Prayer Call” on October 14th — to shame LGBT youth and sell them the lie that they can pray away the gay.
“Please spread the word as we begin a new ministry to this generation,” writes “ex-lesbian” Boynes.
How many gay teenagers will have to be bullied, harassed, or commit suicide before these creepy predators keep their filthy, bloodstained hands off these youth? The ink on the newspaper death notices has barely dried and the ex-gay industry is ramping up its deadly propaganda.
Enough is enough. Am I the only one who is sickened by the efforts of Boynes and others of her ilk? The timing of this call shows a lack of class and is, quite frankly, grotesque.
This is not Boynes first effort in trying to brainwash youth. She is also a part of the so-called “Ex-Gay” Educators Caucus that tries to cajole schools into carrying scientifically bankrupt materials or hosting unstable “ex-gay” activists.
If you are a gay youth who has been bullied or simply a concerned citizen, please call into her brainwashing session and let Boynes know that her despicable “ex-gay” program is precisely what leads to bullying and suicides.
In a blog post on June 1, Exodus International blames the Old Testament for the emergence of a fundamentalist Christian punk-rock music group which espouses Islamist-style genocide against homosexuals. Thomas also denies any responsibility — at headquarters or locally — for the decision by its Exodus affiliate in Minnesota to host that same music group.
Exodus executive vice president Randy Thomas says:
Using Old Testament scriptures to condemn a person to death is not “loving” … it is incomplete theology and powerfully irresponsible.
In other words, Thomas is saying: Don’t blame conservative Christians for the Jewish words of Leviticus — or for preoccupations with the Old Testament that result from Exodus’ own decades-long exploitation of politically selective Old Testament verses. Thomas tries to explain away Exodus’ literalist misuse of the Old Testament by diverting reader attention to the New Testament.
He (Jesus) died and paid the price for all of our sin, including those of us who have or do struggle with homosexuality.
Thomas is speaking of conservative Christians when he says “our” and “us” — not liberal Christians, not Jews, and certainly not atheists, Buddhists or anyone else whom Thomas deems to be spiritually unclean and ostracized.
In rejecting the literalism of music group You Can Run But You Can’t Hide (YCR) as “incomplete,” Exodus is in fact projecting its own incomplete literalism upon YCR. Exodus mandates belief in a literal Bible while averting public attention from the Bible’s numerous literal endorsements of rape, incest, polygamy, slaughter of innocents, bodily dismemberment, stoning, slavery, and ethnic and sexual bigotry. The legalism of YCR reflects the completion of Exodus’ own incomplete and politically neutered fundamentalist theology.
Regarding YCR’s youth outreach events (of which Exodus knew the content), Ex-Gay Watch observes:
At least from this writer’ understanding, there didn’t seem to be any trace of orthodox Christian theology present ‚Äî just constant worship of a nebulous idol called “the law.” These are the extremes of our age, and Dean in particular seems never to have met a conspiracy theory too wild to be considered seriously.
Exodus hosted YCR because it shares much of YCR’s legalism and its abusive “scared straight” attitude toward sinners. How, one may ask, is Exodus legalistic?
Exodus practices religious legalism when it hosts a punk-rock group that is notorious in Minnesota for its legalism and its arrogant hatred of “sinners.”
Exodus practices religious legalism when it routinely cites proof-texted Bible verses to justify discrimination and harassment against LGBT people, regardless of what the U.S. Constitution says about individual rights or the freedom of religious minorities.
And Exodus practices religious legalism when it uses word games to dance around its responsibility for hosting the group — and for its “ministry” guidelines which encourage affiliation with abusive organizations and counselors.
For all his belated and elliptical criticism of the kill-the-gays group, Thomas declines to oppose antigay discrimination and imprisonment. He does not criticize either LWCC or Exodus representative Janet Boynes — a key ally in Exodus HQ’s battle against inclusion of sexual orientation in hate-crime laws — for hosting a notorious hate group, nor does he demand change in Exodus affiliate guidelines for hosted events.
At Exodus, no one is ever held responsible — except, of course, the supposed homosexual sympathizers who expose Exodus’ wrongdoing.
Janet Boynes Ministry is challenging Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) as an organization “ministering” to parents who have GLBT children. According to Boynes’ newsletter:
“Janet Boynes Ministries is pleased to launch our new blog, Parents Reaching Parents, to assist parents in finding support from other parents in the midst of this journey. May this blog be a blessing to you.”
I can’t blame Boynes for wanting to supplant PFOX as the primary organization alienating parents from their GLBT children. PFOX is basically a sham group that serves as a front for anti-gay legal organizations to sue people or schools. It has attracted bizarre activists, such as Richard Cohen, Anthony Falzarano and Greg Quinlan, who represent about the worst faces the ex-gay industry can put forth.
While Boynes is friendly and well intentioned, she is terribly misguided and will most certainly separate parents from their kids. This is especially sad as we approach the holiday season, when loving families should be together, not divided and driven apart because of religious extremism.
According to Boynes’ website:
Janet Boynes Ministries (JBM) is a non-denominational outreach dedicated to evangelism by preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. JBM will also minister to individuals who question their sexuality or who wish to leave homosexuality. JBM will seek to inform and challenge churches and society about the issues surrounding sexuality and teach how to minister to the homosexual community. These goals will be accomplished through promotion of family values, public speaking events, distribution of media, and coordination with individuals, churches, ministries, and organizations.
Just what America needs – yet another professional “ex-gay” seeking the limelight and peddling false tales of change for profit. I suppose it is a good gig while it lasts – until the almost inevitable “fall”. But, I suppose this is an improvement over PFOX, the most reprehensible and creepy organization in the nation.
This is exactly what ex-gay activist Janet Boynes didn’t want.
he Religious Right’s “ex-gay” flavor of the moment (many others have either come out or been scandalized) is also the founder of 
The first 40 minutes of the program were devoted largely to journalist Lisa Ling’s encounters with a series of ex-gays who admitted facing long struggles against their sexual orientation. Her interactions were frequently supervised and steered by Exodus personnel.
