Ex-Gay Watch

It hasn’t been an easy year for JONAH. First, their co-founder Arthur “Abba” Goldberg was outed as a convicted felon. Then, a scandal broke about how two young Orthodox Jewish men were engaged in bizarre, naked therapy wherein it was reported a much older man, Alan Downing, instructed them to touch their genitals in front of a mirror while he watched. This scandal led to an awkward (though ironically more accurate) name change, “Jews Offering New Alternatives to Healing.”

Now a statement has been signed by many Orthodox rabbis confirming their support for gay people, including their “religious right to reject” ex-gay therapy. But their hastily applied band-aid hardly covers a thing. As was noted in a previous article, JONAH’s web page title still reads “Homosexuality” instead of “Healing.” And the dozens of references to the old name have yet to be edited in the articles on the site. But the biggest proof that JONAH hasn’t even changed superficially is the continued support for the bizarre therapy that led to the Downing scandal in the first place.

According to JONAH’s website, “Many who struggle with SSA experience touch deprivation, an issue often overlooked in therapy.” That’s why point number 10 of their FAQ endorses the practice that other ex-gay organizations have long shunned. At the Exodus and NARTH websites, damning references will disappear within hours of exposure on a gay-supportive blog. In the case of disgraced “sexual reorientation life coach” Richard Cohen, statements may even appear opposing the use of “touch therapy.” But JONAH is obviously not on the ball, and they clearly lack the self-awareness to recoop their image, even superficially.

JONAH can’t even prove “change is possible” in their own website content.

Truth Wins Out’s Wayne Besen has challenged Alan Downing to take a lie detector test following claims that he engaged in sexual misconduct with two male clients:

In light of his public denial, Truth Wins Out offered to pay for both a polygraph and a No Lie MRI for Downing, so he can prove his alleged innocence. … We believe that Alan Downing is not telling the truth and that his brain would light up like a Menorah if he took a No Lie MRI.

I’m not convinced either lie detector test is the way to go. No evidence exists that the polygraph is reliable, and investigations into the validity of MRI (or fMRI) method of lie detection, despite having generally positive results, are still at an early stage.

Of course,  Besen’s motivation is equally or mostly to get the allegations out in the open, which is fair enough. But if Downing is guilty of this unsavory sexual abuse, a court–not a machine–will do the work of proving it.

Two men have accused Alan Downing, a life coach with Richard Cohen’s ex-gay International Healing Foundation, of using sexually inappropriate therapy techniques, according to Truth Wins Out.

On separate occasions, Downing allegedly asked Ben Unger and Chaim Levin to undress in front of a mirror and fondle their genitals while he watched, saying this would help them affirm their masculinity.

Downing is a close associate of JONAH, the Jewish ex-gay organization whose leader Arthur Abba Goldberg was exposed as a convicted Wall Street felon earlier this year. He has also run courses and retreats for the controversial Mankind Project., and worked with the gay-to-straight outreach People Can Change and its affiliate Journey into Manhood.

Downing is ex-gay, but admits he is still attracted to men, according to TWO.

First Goldberg, then George Rekers, and now Downing–they’re falling fast this year.

See also Wayne Besen’s follow-up editorial at Huffington Post: Ex-Gay Therapy Is Scandalous.

Dr George Rekers has resigned from the board of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), following allegations that he received nude, erotic massages from a male prostitute.

Rekers, who has been an anti-gay activist for decades, took a 10-day European vacation with Jo-Vanni Roman (at first identified only as “Lucien”), a gay escort who says they met through the explicit website Rentboy.com. Rekers faced humiliation in the media after denying the accusations, claiming he he hired Roman to help carry his luggage while he recovered from surgery. He said he only found out Roman was an escort partway through the trip, and responded by evangelizing him and warning him against homosexuality.

Stepping down from NARTH, Rekers wrote:

I am immediately resigning my membership in NARTH to allow myself the time necessary to fight the false media reports that have been made against me. With the assistance of a defamation attorney, I will fight these false reports because I have not engaged in any homosexual behavior whatsoever. I am not gay and never have been.

NARTH responded:

NARTH has accepted Dr. Rekers’ resignation and would hope that the legal process will sufficiently clarify the questions that have arisen in this unfortunate situation. We express our sincere sympathy to all individuals, regardless of their perspective, who have been injured by these events. We also wish to reiterate our traditional position that these personal controversies do not change the scientific data, nor do they detract from the important work of NARTH. NARTH continues to support scientific research, and to value client autonomy, client self-determination and client diversity.

Earlier this week, there were premature reports of some websites and organizations (Focus on the Family’s Family Research Council, for example, which Rekers co-founded) deleting mentions of Rekers from their history. Today, Dr Warren Throckmorton reports that the purge has begun.

Joe Jervis from the blog Joe.My.God has posted an excellent and refreshingly candid interview he conducted by phone with Jo-Vanni Roman (Lucien), the 20 year old male escort who accompanied anti-gay activist George Rekers to Europe recently. In that interview, Jo-Vanni mentions that he would be taping an interview for “that gay reporter on TV.” Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out (TWO) has confirmed that he will also be on CNN’s 360 with Anderson Cooper tonight.

A transcript of a conversation Rekers reportedly had with Jo-Vanni shortly after the story broke has been posted on the Miami New Times site. Both it and the Jervis interview add to the details. Jo-Vanni seems to be naive but bright and lacking in guile. In contrast, Rekers seems wrapped in layers of hypocritical deception, making conflicting statements and lashing out. The irony has not escaped notice.

Tonight’s interview is probably must-see for anyone who ends up reading here. Feel free to discuss your reactions and observations on this thread after.

The gay escort at the center of the George Rekers scandal says Rekers paid him for nude massages.

On Tuesday, the Miami New Times reported that Dr George Rekers, a long-time anti-gay, ex-gay Religious Right activist and scholar, had taken a vacation with a 20-year-old male prostitute he had met through the sexually explicit website Rentboy.com.

Rekers first claimed “Lucien” was a travel assistant, employed to help him lifting luggage, following recent back surgery. He later added the incredulous story that he was evangelizing Lucien in an attempt to persuade him against homosexuality.

Lucien said there was no sex between them, but he has now admitted there was sexual contact, and told Miami New Times that Rekers paid him for daily body rubs during the European vacation:

Rekers allegedly named his favorite maneuver the “long stroke” – a complicated caress “across his penis, thigh … and his anus over the butt cheeks,” as the escort puts it. “Rekers liked to be rubbed down there,” he says.

Dr George Rekers was co-founder of the Family Research Council, a board member of NARTH, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus Professor at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine. The latter disassociated itself from Rekers today by removing his profile from its website. Expect other organizations to follow suit.

Meanwhile, Exodus International President Alan Chambers has written about the situation, calling out the “gay community” for throwing stones at Rekers and for failing to extend any “compassion or care” to Lucien, whom he invites to call Exodus.

Sure, the coverage has been tacky at times, and frankly, I didn’t see a lot of concern for Lucien in some of the reports I read. But Alan’s own attempt to use Lucien as an opportunity to smear gays for offering “counterfeit” community, promote Exodus and its message, and exalt the virtues of his own compassion is hardly much classier – and very transparent.

While the titillating details of the events surrounding anti-gay activist Dr George Rekers’ recent overseas trip with a male escort continue to spread at an incredible rate, there are some errors multiplying just as quickly.

While we fully expect from past experience that conservative sites now referencing Rekers will start to disassociate themselves at some point, there is no evidence that this has happened yet. Contrary to recent reports which are being duplicated with the fast pace of reporting on this story, it does not appear that the Family Research Counsel (FRC) has made any recent edits to their site concerning Rekers.

At some point in the past, perhaps as far back as 2007, the FRC restructured it’s web site. The page describing their origins was changed to eliminate a couple of academics, Armand Nicholoi Jr. of Harvard University and George Rekers of the University of South Carolina. It now focuses more on conservative political figures such as Gerald P. Regier, Department of Health and Human Services in the Reagan administration.

The verbiage concerning Rekers and Nicholoi was moved to their FAQ where it remains (in the answer to the second question). However, even the May 1 Google cache of the page in question shows that it is the same as it was before the Miami New Times story broke.

Again, a silent purge of Rekers from conservative sites would be typical, but it should be noted for the record that this hasn’t yet happened. It’s easy to make mistakes on such a quickly developing bombshell as this — we have all done it — but all the more reason to be especially careful not to cloud the serious facts with false information.

Religious Right scholar, anti-gay activist and NARTH officer Dr George Rekers has responded directly to blogger Joe. My. God following the report that he took a vacation with a male prostitute he’d met through the sexually explicit website Rentboy.com.

Wrote Rekers:

I have spent much time as a mental health professional and as a Christian minister helping and lovingly caring for people identifying themselves as “gay.” My hero is Jesus Christ who loves even the culturally despised people, including sexual sinners and prostitutes. Like Jesus Christ, I deliberately spend time with sinners with the loving goal to try to help them. Mark 2:16-17 reads, “16When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the “sinners” and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?” 17On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” In fact, in a dialogue with hypocritical religious leaders, Jesus even stated to them, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him. ” (Matthew 21:31).

Like John the Baptist and Jesus, I have a loving Christian ministry to homosexuals and prostitutes in which I share the Good News of Jesus Christ with them (see I Corinthians 6:8-11). Contrary to false gossip, innuendo, and slander about me, I do not in any way “hate” homosexuals, but I seek to lovingly share two types of messages to them, as I did with the young man called “Lucien” in the news story: [1] It is possible to cease homosexual practices to avoid the unacceptable health risks associated with that behavior, and [2] the most important decision one can make is to establish a relationship with God for all eternity by trusting in Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for the forgiveness of your sins, including homosexual sins. If you talk with my travel assistant that the story called “Lucien,” you will find I spent a great deal of time sharing scientific information on the desirability of abandoning homosexual intercourse, and I shared the Gospel of Jesus Christ with him in great detail.

According to the Miami New Times, an anti-gay activist and NARTH officer took a vacation with a rentboy he met through the sexually explicit gay hookup website Rentboy.com.

George Rekers, PhD is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, and has been lurking behind the scenes of the Religious Right and the ex-gay movement for decades. In 1983, he co-founded the vociferously homophobic Family Research Council with Dr James Dobson of Focus on the Family, and – among other political activities – he testified against gay adoption in the state of Florida, in 2008. He has written extensively against LGBT persons, as a search of the NARTH website will show.

But now the academic who has worked tirelessly for discrimination against gays has reportedly vacationed with a gay male prostitute he met through a gay website. The Miami New Times reports:

Rekers said he learned [travel companion] Lucien was a prostitute only midway through their vacation. “I had surgery,” Rekers said, “and I can’t lift luggage. That’s why I hired him.” (Though medical problems didn’t stop him from pushing the tottering baggage cart through MIA.)

Yet Rekers wouldn’t deny he met his slender, blond escort at Rentboy.com — which features homepage images of men in bondage and grainy videos of crotch-rubbing twinks — and Lucien confirmed it.

There would appear little doubt that Rekers met Lucien by deliberately trawling the explicit website. As the article points out, users must manually agree to to enter the site in the knowledge that it contains graphic sexual material.

Dr Rekers is the second NARTH officer this year to be exposed by the media. In February, the pseudo-psychiatric organization’s Executive Secretary Arthur Abba Goldberg was revealed to have been hiding a criminal past. Goldberg, who also co-founded and co-directs the Jewish ex-gay organization JONAH, was found to have been convicted and jailed for his part in a major Wall Street fraud during the 1980s.

Goldberg subsequently resigned from NARTH – but not before blaming the LGBT community for his failings.

We can expect Rekers’s name to be quietly removed from NARTH’s list of officers in the coming days.

Ex-Gay Watch reported on Matthew C. Manning’s troubling criminal record in June, 2009.  Manning claims to have been “delivered from homosexuality in 1989 and miraculously healed from HIV/AIDS in 1994.”  He has claimed that this enabled him to help people wishing to be “delivered from homosexuality.”  Readers unfamiliar with Manning are invited to read our previous post for background.

What’s happened since last June

The day after last year’s post, Manning filed to expunge the conviction from 2005 per California penal code 1203.4.  It appears to have been granted on August 10, 2009.  This is something we contemplated in the original article — California law provides for this in some cases if the defendant follows all court imposed conditions. These are listed in our post from that time.  A reading of the statute indicates that the expungement has limits, especially if one is found guilty of another crime in the future.

It also seems he either tried to, or did sell his house in Santa Rosa.  We don’t currently have the records to know under what circumstances this was done.  His new ministry address is a UPS private mail box in San Francisco.

All references we could find indicate that his house was his main ministry location.  Aside from a period during which a local church allowed him to use a room at off hours for meetings, his home is the only thing we could find.  Copies of the ministry 990s bear this out with no payments to any property or office outside the home.  There are expenses claimed for a “ministry house” which we assume to be a reference to his home (or former home) in Santa Rosa.

There is also no mention of a board of directors, in spite of the fact that posts appear on Manning’s blog claiming to be from them, discussing Manning’s activities, claiming to give their blessings to this or that move, etc.  These posts follow Manning’s grammar and writing style closely.  It is our considered opinion that Manning is the sole “director” of Light House World Evangelism, Inc.  He is listed as president on the 990s, with his wife as secretary. Read more…