How to make gnus read something besides .gnus in batch mode

[Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com>]

I want to run batch commands but not read my standard .emacs .gnus
site-start.el.   I've learned from the past that things in any init
files that write to standard out like (message) can cause I/O errors.
But I like having some of those in there... so:

I compile an init file on the fly for gnus (or emacs) to read.  But
how can I aim gnus at only that file?

I've tinkered with the batch command shown in gnus manual:
 From manual version:
  emacs -batch -l ~/.emacs -f -l ~/.gnus.el gnus-agent-batch >/dev/null 2>&1

 To my version:
  emacs -q -no-site-file -batch -l ~/.my_gnus.el -f gnus-agent-batch

It still tries to load ~/.gnus:
  emacs -q -no-site-file -batch -l ~/.my_gnus.el -f gnus-agent-batch
  hello world -- ~/.gnus
Reading /home/reader/.newsrc-enews.newsguy.com.eld...
[...]

The formulation in the manual has a `-f -l  ~/.gnus.el' before 
agent-fetch but when I try that it give me this error:

   emacs -q -no-site-file -batch -l ~/.my_gnus.el -f -l \
    ~/.my_gnus.el  gnus-agent-batch
  Symbol's function definition is void: -l

So how can I tell the function `gnus-agent-batch' which code to load
and prevent it from automatically reading ~/.gnus.

I know about the behavior where if both ~/.gnus and ~/.gnus.el are
present then ~/.gnus.el is read, but that seems likely to lead to a
running gnus reading from ~/.gnus.el too.  

Even if I create it for the batch run, then destroy it.  Still seems
sooner or later it would get inadvertantly read by a possible running
gnus process during the batch fetch.