Former lesbian says her homosexuality was a response to sexual and psychological abuse

Former lesbian Janet Boynes says that her homosexuality began as it does for many women: as a response to sexual and psychological abuse she suffered as a child.

She was raised by one of her mother's boyfriends, an alcoholic who abused her mother, who in turn showed Boynes little affection. At 12 she was molested by a relative, then an altar boy at her church.  She began to suffer an aversion to men, and found that her own sex was more appealing.  She also began using drugs.

"I was starting to become more attracted to women," Boynes told CBN in a recent interview. "So many men had hurt me that these women, I thought, were a lot more like me."

Her pain was covered over by a false masculinity that made her into a school bully, she says, and already in school people began to ask her if she was a lesbian - an idea she avoided until her 20s, when her loneliness led her to her first sexual encounter with a woman.

Although she had had a conversion to Christianity, Boynes says her lesbian experience led her to reject her faith and to enter into the homosexual lifestyle, with all of its turbulence and pain. She moved from one relationship to the next, became a cocaine addict, and developed bulimia, she says.

"My life was miserable. It was starting to go literally down the tubes," says Boynes. "But I was refusing to come back to God."

However, her life began to change when she was invited to a local church that she had often seen on her way to work.  

"And me, not thinking in my right mind, I said, 'sure, I'll go.' and I came in with these sweat pants on, looking grubby, not knowing what to expect," Boynes told CBN.  "I'm in a room with nine other women, just beautiful women, feminine, and I thought, 'what have I gotten myself into?' so, I'm sitting there with my head down, feeling so ashamed, thinking these women are cruel, they're going to chew me up and spit me out." 

"Everyone introduced themselves, and when they got to me, they asked me my name, and I said, 'my name is Janet.' and I said, 'I'm living a homosexual life. But if you help me, I will live my life for the Lord.'"

Boynes says she was shown compassion and understanding, and given support by the church's members in her struggle to free herself from her addictive lifestyle.  Eventually, a couple offered to take her into their home, where she lived for a year and received the love she had never experienced as a child.  She abandoned lesbianism permanently, and recovered her heterosexual identity. 

"I want everybody else that's living the homosexual life who didn't have a great mother or who didn't have a great father to experience that God is a father to the fatherless or motherless," says Boynes. "That what he's done for me, he will do for them also."

Eleven years later, Boynes runs a ministry that offers help to those seeking to escape from the homosexual lifestyle. She also recently testified before the Minnesota Senate's Judiciary Committee against the creation of homosexual "marriage."

Noting that she and one of her lesbian partners wanted to "marry" and adopt children, she told the committee: "I'm so thankful that we did not go through with the plan and perpetuate another dysfunctional family. Children need one mother, and one father."

She also noted that "by legalizing homosexual marriage you are supporting and encouraging behavior that scientific evidence shows makes people sick, often incurable and fatal. I saw this borne out in the lives of many of my friends while I was living a lesbian lifestyle."