Just Can't Make This Stuff Up

[Bull]

They just keep doing it to themselves.

Christian Right Leader Nabbed Traveling With Gay Escort

• 5/4/10 at 5:30 PM
• Comment
  32Comment
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Rekers, known mustache wearer.Photo: Towleroad.com

A pair of writers at the Miami New Times are having
trouble repressing their glee that they managed to snap (with their
"hot-pink digital camera") George Alan Rekers, a right-wing Christian
leader and anti-gay lobbyist, getting off a plane at Miami International
Airport with a sizzling-hot gay escort. The prostitute, nicknamed
"Lucien" by the paper, was available for hire on the gay-escort site
Rentboy.com — home of such other celebrity boyfriends/escorts as Jason
Preston, former lover of designer Marc Jacobs. Rekers wouldn't deny he
found Lucien on that site, but he did say he'd only hired him to help
while he was "recovering from surgery" — that's why he took him on an
all-expenses paid ten-day trip through Europe. After all, Rekers did
co-found the group Focus on the Family, which has been the bane of
gay-rights groups since its creation in 1983, and he also is an officer
of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality,
a gay-cure group. Someone like that would NEVER actually hire a gay
hooker, right

[Bull]

For decades, George Alan Rekers has been a general in the culture wars, though his work has often been behind the scenes. In 1983, he and James Dobson, America's best-known homophobe, formed the Family Research Council, a D.C.-based, rabidly Christian, and vehemently anti-gay lobbying group that has become a standard-bearer of the nation's extreme right wing. Its annual Values Summit is considered a litmus test for Republican presidential hopefuls, and Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter have spoken there. (The Family Research Council would not comment about Rekers's Euro-trip.)

He has also influenced American government, serving in advisory roles with Congress, the White House, and the Department of Health and Human Services and testifying as a state's witness in favor of Florida's gay adoption ban. A former research fellow at Harvard University and a distinguished professor of neuropsychiatry at the University of South Carolina, Rekers has published papers and books by the hundreds, with titles like Who Am I? Lord and Growing Up Straight: What Families Should Know About Homosexuality.

"While he keeps a low public profile, his fingerprints are on almost every anti-gay effort to demean and dehumanize LGBT people," says Wayne Besen, a gay rights advocate in New York City and the executive director of Truth Wins Out, which investigates the anti-gay movement. "His work is ubiquitously cited by lobby groups that work to deny equality to LGBT Americans. Rekers has caused a great deal of harm to gay and lesbian individuals."

Rekers is a board member of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), an organization that systematically attempts to turn gay people straight. And the Huffington Post recently singled out Rekers as a member of the American College of Pediatricians — an official-sounding outfit in Gainesville that purveys lurid, youth-directed literature accusing gays of en masse coprophilia. (In an email, the college's Lisa Hawkins wrote, "ACPeds feels privileged to have a scholar of Dr. Rekers' stature affiliated with our organization. I am sure you will find Prof. Rekers to be an immaculate clinician/scholar, and a warm human being.")

[Mark F]

If I recall correctly, several years ago, a leader of Focus On the Family left after it came out he was gay. I'm thinking he was their "lead crusader" against the evil homosexual empire. I believe the guy was Dobson's right-hand man.

I love the bumper sticker I saw a couple months ago: Focus On Your Own Family

[Mark F]

But don't these groups know there is a cure for being gay? If these guys really are gay, they should be able to send them to their "gay cure rehab" and they'll come out straight as an arrow. Right?

I'm with you though, anyone who is vehemently opposed to gay rights usually has something to "hide". There was a California state rep. a couple months ago busted outside a gay club (DUI I think). He had voted against EVERY gay rights bill that ever came up for vote when he was in office.