Pray the Gay Away?
episode of Our America with Lisa Ling

"Pray the Gay Away?" is a 2011 episode of the American television series Our America with Lisa Ling. The episode, hosted by Ling, profiles several people as they seek to reconcile their homosexuality with their Christianity. It originally aired on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network on March 8, 2011.
Speaking for those who believe that Christianity and homosexuality are incompatible was Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International, an ex-gay organization. Also interviewed were Janet Boynes, a woman who states she "walked away" from lesbianism eleven years earlier and who now runs her own ex-gay ministry, a man named Christian whom Janet has been counseling for the last four years and another man named Ethan, whom Ling met at an Exodus conference. Each of the men acknowledged that they still had feelings of attraction to the same sex. Only Boynes said she had no such feelings.
Ling also interviewed several people who had reconciled their sexuality and their faith. Among them was Michael Bussee, who had co-founded Exodus International in 1976 only to leave the group in 1979 when he found himself falling in love with another male founding member. Ling spotlighted The Naming Project, a summer camp program for gay and questioning Christian young people.
“Pray the Gay Away?” enters the record as episode of Our America with Lisa Ling. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Pray, Away and episode can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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