Join the Impact protests ex-gay training

The latest foray by Exodus International, the country's leading ex-gay ministry, into Boston was a relatively low-key affair, but the grassroots LGBT group Join the Impact Massachusetts and other activists turned out to protest and send a loud message of opposition to their teachings.

Exodus held an April 28 pastor training at Park Street Church to promote the organization's message that gay and lesbian people can change their orientation and become heterosexual. Join the Impact held a protest across the street near Park Street Station, but following the speaking portion of the demonstration some of the attendees urged the organizers to move the protest closer to the church, within view of the Exodus training attendees. The protestors marched across the street into the Granary Burying Ground, an historic cemetery next to the church that houses the remains of Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, and the victims of the Boston Massacre, among other important figures in American history, and continued their protest there for about 15 minutes until a police officer asked them to disperse.

Exodus declined a request by Bay Windows for permission to cover the pastor training, saying the event was closed to the press. Exodus has held prior events in Boston, including a daylong conference in 2005 that also sparked a protest by LGBT activists (See "My day with the ex-gays," Nov. 3, 2005).

The protest at Park Street began with several speeches from people accusing the ex-gay movement of disguising a deeply anti-gay agenda. Addressing the crowd of about 40 people, Wayne Besen, a national anti-ex-gay activist and founder of the organization Truth Wins Out, said he started his organization in 2003 after learning that Exodus activists had met with President George W. Bush at the White House to urge him to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment.

"These organizations claim they just want to help people, but really at the heart of it, at the base of it, this is about politics, not people. They have aligned themselves with the hardcore factions of the extreme right like Focus on the Family and the Traditional Values Coalition not to try to change anyone, which is impossible, but to change laws that would protect people from discrimination," said Besen.

He recounted various instances of ex-gay leaders who either left the movement or fell off the wagon, including the infamous instance in 2000 in which Besen himself snapped a photo of former Exodus board chair John Paulk leaving a Washington, D.C. gay bar. Paulk and his wife had been featured on the cover of Newsweek two years before as part of a feature on the ex-gay movement.

Stewart Landers, senior program director for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said that mental health professionals have discounted ex-gay therapy as junk science, and he pointed to a 1997 policy statement by the American Psychological Association opposing the use of so-called reparative therapy.

"The evidence is in. You cannot change sexual orientation through this type of therapy, and they know this as well," said Landers.

Jason Lydon, the openly gay pastor of the Community Church of Boston, urged the crowd to move the protest closer to the church. Earlier that morning he and two friends, Kate Bonner and Adrienne Naylor, had been inside Park Street Church attending the conference, before they were ejected for disrupting the proceedings. Lydon said that Exodus had sent his church an invitation, despite the church's strong support for LGBT rights. He told Bay Windows that during a discussion that morning on male homosexuality he stood up and accused Exodus of promoting the anti-gay prejudice that helped fuel the recent suicides of two 11-year-old boys, Carl Walker-Hoover of Springfield, Massachusetts and Jaheem Herrera of Dekalb, Georgia, who were both bullied and accused of being gay by peers.

"I got up during the part when he was talking about male homosexuality and said, this past month, two eleven-year-old kids killed themselves, and that is your responsibility, and the things that you do lead to things like that. I told them that if Jesus Christ were alive today he would walk into that church and tear apart the space like he did in the temples before, and they were turning his house into a den of thieves," said Lydon. Security escorted him out of the church.

Bonner said about an hour after Lydon was ejected from the conference, during a discussion on female homosexuality, she stood up, announced that she was a lesbian and that she "rejected this oppressive ministry," and she and Naylor kissed and skipped out of the room. They said they left the building and wandered out back to the Granary Burying Ground, where they kissed in view of the windows of the church before wandering down to the protest.

"Ex-gays, go away, we don't want you anyway"

After the speeches Join the Impact activist Chris Mason led the crowd across the street and towards the church as they chanted, "Ex-gays, go away, we don't want you anyway," and "Ex-gay, no way, don't believe a word they say." They entered the Granary Burying Ground and marched to the side of the church, standing in front of the first floor windows. The protestors continued their chants, and the conference attendees were clearly visible through the windows. Within minutes of the protestors' arrival conference attendees closed the blinds.

The protestors continued chanting for about 15 minutes. At one point Mason turned on the megaphone's siren function and pushed it up against the window of the church. Besen took the megaphone and told attendees that an Exodus board member, Don Schmierer, attended a conference last March for opponents of homosexuality in Uganda, whose government imprisons people for being gay. Some of the activists at the conference supported forced imprisonment and ex-gay therapy for gay people, although since the conference Exodus president Alan Chambers has said the organization opposes forced therapy and imprisonment. Besen accused Exodus of working in partnership with anti-gay activists in Uganda.

"The people in Uganda don't have the same freedom of speech as we do, and they're in hiding right now thanks to Exodus International," said Besen, who led the crowd in a chant of, "Uganda, Uganda!"

After about 15 minutes a police officer arrived at the Burying Ground, joined by Chris Sherwood, assistant pastor of Park Street Church and leader of the church's own ex-gay ministry, Alive in Christ. The officer asked to see the driver's license of one of the protest organizers, John Hosty-Grinnell, and took his personal information down on a note pad. As he did so Besen spoke with Sherwood about Exodus' work in Uganda and asked him to demand that Exodus issue an official statement in Uganda opposing the government's anti-gay practices.

After the officer finished collecting Hosty-Grinnell's information the protest dispersed. Later that day the anti-gay Massachusetts Family Institute issued a statement denouncing Join the Impact for "desecrat[ing]" the historic burial ground.

"While every citizen enjoys First Amendment rights to protest, I must object, in the strongest terms, to the desecration of the cemetery by these protesters, and call on the leaders of the state and national homosexual advocacy groups to condemn their behavior," said MFI President Kris Mineau in a statement. Mineau said he was present during the pastor training. MFI also posted a video of the protest on its website that was shot by local anti-gay activist Janet Aldrich.

Don Gorton, one of the organizers of the protest, described MFI's statement as "histrionic."

"That's absurd. We were showing every respect for our history by challenging the ex-gays. Desecrating graves has a very specific meaning," said Gorton. "We would never do that. What we did was enter on public ground and confront the ex-gays because of the harm they do to so many people."

Gorton said the permit for the demonstration entitled them to protest in their original location outside Park Street Station, but he said they were within their legal rights to march to the Granary Burying Ground. He noted that the protestors disbursed when asked to do so by the police, and he said police have not contacted any of the protest organizers after taking down Hosty-Grinnell's information.

"The Granary is public ground. It's trafficked by hundreds of thousands of a people a year. We have the right as does anyone in the public to enter," said Gorton.

MFI accused the protestors of using the sirens on the megaphones to disrupt the pastor training, but Gorton defended the protestors' actions.

"There was no violation of the law. We interfered with none of their rights. They were free to carry on their event. But we did want to make them aware of our opposition to what they do to ruin the lives of so many people," said Gorton.