I don't mean to sound mean or nasty, but Slate has a piece on Michele and Marcus Bachmann's "ex-lesbian" friend, Janet Boynes, and true to form she's a former drug addict/dealer who had by the sounds of it a totally f*cked up life - none of which was due to her being a lesbian (in fact, she sounds like a reprise of Michael Johnston who Wayne Besen and I exposed as a total fraud back in 2003). Yet true to form, she wants to blame all of her problems on her sexual orientation rather than her screwed up family circumstances and/or her own bad choices. Are there any "ex-gays" who weren't drug addicts and/or alcoholics? It seems that ALL of them are one time losers who latched on to the "ex-gay" for pay gravy train. *
Like most "ex-gays," Boynes would have us believe that because of her sexual orientation she did not have a relatively normal life (in contrast to most of us in the LGBT community). Moreover, she wants to blame her utterly screwed up prior life on her homosexuality rather than the real causes of her problems. Frankly, I am way past over having any sympathy for losers like Boynes who messed up their own lives with booze and drugs who then want to say that being gay was the cause of their problems. Let's get real - for Boynes like all the rest of the "ex-gay" for pay crowd they "became stright" only learning that there's good money to be made playing "ex-gay." And as an added bonus, they gain a modicum of respect within the Bible beater circles. . Meanwhile, I can only wonder how many lives of young LGBT individuals will be damaged because of the lies Boynes is promoting. To me, it is utterly disgusting and immoral. Boynes may be enjoying her financial freedom and new found self-respect derived from peddling lies and snake oil to the gullible, but I find her less honorable than the most tawdry whore. Here are highlights from Slate:
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If the Bachmanns still believe that being gay is a sinful lifestyle from which it's possible to be delivered, they aren't about to explain their thinking right now. In the past, however, they have pointed to the testimony of one particular friend as proof of their belief that it is possible to leave the gay "lifestyle." This friend is devoting her life to the proposition that homosexuality is not only destructive but, in some sense, contagious, and her beliefs may provide some useful context for the Bachmanns' past comments. Her name is Janet Boynes, and she calls herself an ex-lesbian.
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"I was not born homosexual," Boynes writes in her memoir. "I made a decision." In her telling, a slew of environmental factors tempted her to make that decision, the way a weakened immune system might make the body prone to infection. Boynes writes that she was born into poverty in Norristown, Pa., one of seven half-siblings by multiple fathers.
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Boynes's life as a gay woman was chaotic; she cheated on her girlfriends and was cheated on. For awhile, she was addicted to—and sold—cocaine. But from time to time, she writes, her churchgoing childhood would kick in, and she would think of God and recognize that she was on a sinful path. At last, she writes, in 1998, a chance encounter with a Christian woman in a parking lot prompted her to renounce her lesbian ways.
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Today, she says she wants to marry a man and is just waiting for the right one to come along. . . . And her emphasis on loving the sinner is often undercut by a fire-and-brimstone judgmentalism. In her book, Boynes tells the harrowing story of her gay brother's death from AIDS over a decade ago–noting that he bled out of every orifice. When I asked her what she made of his death, she said, "Sometimes sin has consequences." As she sees it, sin is trying to take over the culture: The fight for same-sex marriage is just a prelude to normalizing pedophilia and bestiality, she writes. Gay activists are "recruiting" children in schools.
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The belief that homosexuality is highly contagious is at the heart of the perspective propounded by Boynes and shared by the Bachmanns and many other conservative Christians, but it is not new.
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Boynes to suggest, as she did to me, that for many people, "if I'm out there in the homosexual community, hanging out with them on a daily basis, that's what I will become." What doesn't make sense is why, if homosexuality is so darn tempting, more of America isn't already gay.
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Boynes may feel better about herself and be enjoying the financial benefits of being "ex-gay," but I suspect that it's her, not LGBT individuals. who will be called to account on Judgment Day for the lies and untruths she willingly disseminated for the purpose of self-enrichment and to engender praise from the hate filled Bible beating set. But for the damage she is doing to others, she would represent a very sad figure. I'm sorry, but I find her - and the Bachmanns - to be contemptible.
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