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Pray the Gay Away?

episode of Our America with Lisa Ling

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 14, 2026
Entity authorityQ7238979 ↗
Source-derived summary

"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.

Editorial summary

“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.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2011, 1976, 1979—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2011-03-08. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Pray, Away and episode.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Pray the Gay Away?” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Pray, Away and episode provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7238979. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2011, 1976 and 1979.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Search vocabulary
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Pray the Gay Away?” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.