NYC Mayor Fires Educational Adviser Over Homophobic Comments
The New York Daily News reported that "a Staten Island pastor who once equated homosexuality to pedophilia was removed from Mayor Adams' education policy panel within hours of being hired Tuesday." Her firing came after the Daily News had exposed her anti-gay rhetoric.
On March 22, Rev. Kathlyn Barrett-Layne, who leads Staten Island's Reach Out and Touch Ministries, was announced as one of Adams' nine picks to the Panel for Educational Policy, which serves as a governing body for the city Department of Education and approves its contracts, according to the Daily News.
With a press release, Adams' office described Barrett-Layne as a seasoned minister who "spends her time inspiring people with her speaking and teaching in Bible studies."
"But less than six hours later — after The News published a story online outlining her history of anti-gay rhetoric — Adams spokeswoman Amaris Cockfield said Barrett-Layne would not be joining the administration after all," the Daily News said.
"We were unaware of these writings and we've asked her to resign," Cockfield said in an email.
Her anti-gay comments include these found in her 2013 book entitled "Challenging Your Disappointments," in which Barrett-Layne placed same-sex relationships in the same category of "sin" as pedophilia and other crimes while discussing "temptations" facing Christian leaders and their followers.
"Leaders struggle with the same temptations of drugs, alcohol, homosexuality, fornication, adultery, pedophilia, stealing, lying, envy, covetousness, and every other sin that the congregation struggle with," she wrote.
In the same book, Barrett-Layne raised concern about homosexuality among incarcerated people. "They live in the grip of fornicating homosexual lifestyles," she wrote.
She also wrote in her 2004 book entitled "When Your Mess Becomes the Message" about how her 3-year-old daughter told her "she was a boy" after being present for a counseling session Barrett-Layne gave a lesbian woman.
"Barrett-Layne wrote that she and her husband 'began to militantly and violently pray for, with and over our daughter,'" the Daily News relayed.
"We prayed against every spirit that was not of God, including the spirit of homosexuality," she wrote. "At the end of that prayer, my daughter asked me if she was a girl. When I told her yes, she happily began to sing and rejoice about being mommy and daddy's little girl. To tell you this was one of the most frightening experiences I had with my little girl is an understatement."
Allen Roskoff, a longtime LGBTQ+ rights activist who has known Adams for years, told the Daily News he had voiced his displeasure about the Barrett-Layne hire in text messages to the mayor a few hours before her firing.
Roskoff said he was pleased by Adams' rapid reversal, but called it "only a partial victory."
"Her replacement needs to be someone from the LGBTQ community," Roskoff said. "We're only halfway there."
"The Barrett-Layne debacle comes on the heels of Adams drawing intense pushback for hiring three other pastors with histories of anti-gay rhetoric," the Daily News said. "Those three pastors remain in their posts, including ex-City Councilman Fernando Cabrera, who was tapped as Adams' senior faith adviser despite his past praise for Uganda's notoriously homophobic government."