George Rekers is completely heterosexual (Video Sunday)

George Rekers and child abuse

People continue to dig into the past of Dr George Rekers. While we are inclined to laugh at him now, it's important to remember that he is a brutal hypocrite who has actually caused great harm. As Frank Rich writes,

[O]nce we stop laughing, we must remember that culture wars are called wars for a reason. For all the farcical shenanigans they can generate, they do inflict real casualties....

Rekers is no bit player in these wars. Though he’s not a household name, he should be. He’s the Zelig of homophobia, having played a significant role in many of the ugliest assaults on gay people and their civil rights over the last three decades....

Thanks to Rekers’s clownish public exposure, we now know that his professional judgments are windows into his cracked psyche, not gay people’s. But there is nothing funny about the destruction his writings and public activities have sown. His fringe views have not remained on the fringe. His excursions into public policy have had real and damaging consequences on a large swath of Americans.

The crusade he represents is, thankfully, on its last legs......But the rear-guard remnants of the Rekers crowd are not going down without a fight.....

An example of Rekers' activities and their consequences is reported by The Miami New Times (who broke the original story).

What do you do with a little boy who likes cross-dressing and playing with dolls? If you're George Alan Rekers, you "extinguish" the boy's feminine behavior with a sometimes violent Pavlovian regimen while your scientific team observes through a one-way mirror.

....In 1974, Rekers, a leading thinker in the so-called ex-gay movement, was presented with a 4-year-old "effeminate boy" named Kraig.....Kraig received red chips for feminine behavior and blue chips for masculine behavior. The blue chips could be cashed in for candy or television time. The red chips earned him a "swat" or spanking from his father. Researchers periodically entered the family's home to ensure proper implementation of the reward-punishment system.

More detail comes from a 1970's newspaper article describing the program Kraig was in, posted at As Good as You, that describes Kraig's "progress":

Now, he regularly returns aggressiveness in his male-peer interactions. In fact, the researchers write, Kraig's mommy was alarmed at her son's transformation into 'a roughneck' -- so reckless in play that he was hurting himself and damaging the furniture. The psychiatrists reassure the mother that her son's 'mildly delinquent ' behaviour would be far easier to overcome in later years than effeminacy.

(The article also notes that Rekers had a colleague in this program "known for his use of electric cattle prods in behaviour modificaiton therapy on autistic children." Even for the 1970s, that seems very grim.)

The Miami New Times picks up the story again:

After two years, the boy supposedly manned up. Over the decades, Rekers, who ran countless similar experiments, held Kraig up as "the poster boy for behavioral treatment of boyhood effeminacy."

At age 18, shamed by his childhood diagnosis and treatment, Rekers's poster boy attempted suicide.

How many lives and psyches were wrecked by this man? How many of his victims were successful in ending their lives as a result of his own self-loathing internalized homophobia? We may indeed enjoy mocking his spectacular flame-out with the RentBoy. But let us not forget that most of this story is not the least bit funny.

And these arguments aren't over. Remember, in the Prop8 trial, so-called "experts" testifying about those Horrible Gay People included those who cite Rekers (though they try to deny it, he's in their list). Some speculate that this scandal may influence the Prop8 trial..

Still, as Andrew Sullivan says,

It's time we took a stand against tortured gay men abusing children to vent their own demons.

And George Rekers, a man who claims to be Christian, should beg his victims for forgiveness.

Update This article from the St Petersburg Times describes the arguments he used as an "expert witness". More on that lucrative business here.

The lucrative business of George Rekers

The recent revelation that Dr George Rekers, reliably anti-gay "expert", travels with a rentboy, has led to closer examination of Rekers' activities. What a comfortable scam he has established for himself.

Trading on his education (he's a retired professor of neuropsychiatry and behavioral science at the University of South Carolina), Rekers claims to be an expert in child psychiatry. He is a co-founder of the Family Research Council and a member of NARTH, a group promoting the disproven "treatment" called "reparative therapy". Both those groups have erased his name from their websites in the wake of the current scandal.

He founded the American College of Pediatrics, a small group of anti-gay activists that deliberately mis-states the facts about homosexuality. (It is not to be confused with the actual American Academy of Pediatrics, which like all other mainstream medical associations has depathologized homosexuality, and recognizes being gay as a normal human variant).

But the most interesting aspect of Rekers' career is being a witness-for-hire in cases that attack GLBT rights. Turns out that he was hired by the state of Florida as an expert witness during their recent trial about gay adoption. Initial reports were that this cost the state about $60,000 but more recent reports indicate that Rekers was paid on the order of $120,000, at the behest of Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum.

(Though you have to wonder why, with that much money in the bank, Rekers couldn't afford a better room for his rentboy, who commented that their accommodations were far from deluxe and that their hotel in London was "like a crappy Days Inn or something." )

In fact, McCollum insisted the state hire Rekers despite the expense. It might not have been such a good deal, however, because the judge dismissed Rekers' testimony as inaccurate and clearly biased:

Dr. Rekers’ testimony was far from a neutral and unbiased recitation of the relevant scientific evidence. Dr. Rekers’ beliefs are motivated by his strong ideological and theological convictions that are not consistent with the science. Based on his testimony and demeanor at trial, the court can not consider his testimony to be credible nor worthy of forming the basis of public policy.
PDF source.

Similar results came from a trial in Arkansas a few years ago.

This expensive debacle might cause McCollum a little trouble in his bid for governor. As Steve Benen comments in the Washington Monthly,

Indeed, the heart of the controversy here is McCollum's bizarre judgment and questionable use of taxpayer money. Rekers was, in effect, part of a sad, right-wing scheme -- collecting big checks to say crazy things in court. But the real question is why McCollum personally intervened to deliver Rekers a lucrative, publicly-financed, intolerant payday.

Still, the bigotry in Florida is probably strong enough to survive.

It's quite a deal, don't you think? Travel the country spouting pseudo-scientific bigotry as a professional witness for hire. Is he a really cynical scam artist? Or does he really believe his lies justify the payment?

Leonard Pitts in the Miami Herald says,

[T}here is a moral crime here. We are, after all, talking about men in positions of authority and reach, men who could make laws and influence public perception and who used that power against their own.....That's more than hypocrisy, more even than self-loathing. It is a betrayal of one's own, a sellout of the most vulnerable. And what's sad is not just that a George Rekers would do this, but that ours is a culture that would encourage and reward such duplicity in the first place.

So, think about it. Rekers appears to be a deeply closeted gay man who has made a lot of money out of hurting GLBT people. His recent indiscretion with a male prostitute has led to his public shaming. He's been dismissed from the cozy relationship with the prominent anti-gay organizations and he has very likely lost his comfortable livelihood as a professional witness.

Payback's a bitch.

Update: Here's Keith Olbermann on Rekers:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Homophobes, hypocrites, and the possibility of redemption

"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us." - Hermann Hesse

In 1996, a research team recruited a group of straight men and used a questionnaire to determine how gay-friendly they were. They divided them into two groups: homophobic, and non-homophobic. Then they showed them straight and gay porn videos, while monitoring their sexual response. Remarkably, the firecely straight, homophobic men were sexually stimulated by gay porn, while the gay-friendly men were not. Adams HE, et al, J Abnorm Psychol. 1996 Aug;105(3):440-5

Lots of writers are wondering if that study explains the spectacular crash-n-burn of fulminating anti-gay activists, preachers, and politicians: people like George "Rentboy" Rekers, Ted "Meth-n-Sex" Haggard, Larry "wide stance" Craig, and Roy "gay clubber" Ashburn. These men make careers out of attacking GLBT individuals and families while at the same time seeking gay sex. (In fact, Rekers may have found this particularly lucrative; I'll tell you about that next time). Ashburn at least now admits he's gay, which could put him on a path to recovery (think the former Governor of NJ, Jim McGreevey, who also came out).

Writing in the Daily Beast, Michelle Goldberg says,

Rekers deserves a measure of pity as well as scorn. If he portrayed homosexuality as a life-destroying temptation that only the strictest of measures could contain, that’s because, for him, it was.

I think this is the kernal of truth in the matter. These men all have internalized homophobia. They have denied who they are, and made that denial at the root of their being. How much they must resent the healthy gay men who are open and happy, while they have deeply invested in the worst type of self-loathing closet.

Moreover, it is probably significant that these men were all engaged in the most soulless sexual encounters. That's all they know, so of course, that's what they think describes all gay relationships. The absolute bile and bigotry they spew makes some twisted sense if you realize that to them, pickups and prostitutes and anonymous sex are all there is to it. They don't experience healthy sexuality, faithfulness in relationships, or family life. Homosexuality to them really is only about furtive, hidden, and dirty sex. Of course that's counter to what any of our goals are for healthy lives. Sadly, their own secret desires lead them to attack those who disprove their own experience.

For many of us in our middle years, the dawning awareness of our sexuality came late. And for a variety of professional reasons, many of us lived in the closet for some period of time. It seemed safer in there, though absolutely suffocating. Coming out in mid-life is therefore nothing new, though it can be painful and messy. Yet the serenity that comes from the freedom to live honestly cannot be overstated. No career is worth the lies of the closet.

Let's compare the difference in two preachers. Longtime Jerry Falwell associate Mel White was an active participant in Falwell's anti-gay evangelical movement. But he acknowledged his sexuality, was cast out of Falwell's moement, and now lives as an openly gay man. White founded the progay religious group Soulforce. Redemption, new life, happy ending.

In contrast, Rekers, also a Baptist minister, is still twisting in the breeze as his name is erased from all the gay-phobic right wing groups that he helped found, while bleating unconvincingly that he is not, and never has been, a homosexual. This story is pretty dark right now. Any bets on whether he'll find the light?

George Rekers, come out (video Sunday)

Our Rachel takes him down:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Hyporite alert: George Rekers

Just when you thought all the Republican secret homos had been exposed, there's another one. There's a new euphemism to add to Larry Craig (remember the "wide stance"?)

Dr George Reker is a Baptist minister, co-founder of Dobson's Family Research Council, founder of the anti-gay American College of Pediatricians, and outspoken opponent of marriage or adoption by same sex couples. He was recently paid $87,000 by the state of Florida to oppose gay adoptions (and Native American adoptions too). His pseudoscience would be funny if it weren't doing such damage.

This week Rekers was caught coming home with an escort after a European trip. The escort came from a sex site called Rentboy. Rekers claims that he hired the escort to help him "lift his luggage" as he couldn't do it himself.

So that's what they call it now.

Now Rekers is claiming he hired the boy so he (Rekers) could cure the boy of his sins.

The Advocate reports,

In a Tuesday afternoon post, Unzippedidentified the profile of the RentBoy, titled "Boynextdoor/Geo." By Tuesday evening, Family Research Council had removed Rekers' name from its website.

Yes, the forces of Hate are quick to turn on their own and "disappear" them.

It's hard not to cackle with glee at another hypocrite revealed. (Colbert does a great piece on it).

But Rob Tisinai has some measured words,

It’s dehumanizing — to him and to us — to gloat over this poor wreck of a life. Yet we have a human duty to protect others from Rekers and his colleagues in deceit. Don’t caricaturize him as a villain exposed. Present him instead as a victim-turned-abuser, a perfect symbol of the cycle — the vicious, hateful machine — we’re trying to break.

Of course, that doesn't excuse him from the evil he's done . What a poor excuse for a human being he is.