Ex-Gay Watch

Although the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality promotes itself as a professional organization, mental health professionals make up a mere quarter of its 1,000-strong membership.

Dr Warren Throckmorton, a conservative Christian and psychology professor who has become increasingly skeptical of ex-gay “science,” obtained the figures directly from a senior NARTH official:

Actually, according to NARTH’s operations director, David Pruden, only about 250 of NARTH’s approximately 1000 members are mental health professionals. Furthermore, some of those 250 members who have mental health degrees are academics who write about sexuality but do not provide sexual reorientation therapy. Thus, the lion’s share of NARTH’s members consist of lay people, ministers, and activists who have an interest in the materials provided by NARTH but are not scientists or therapists.

Throckmorton observes the sharp contrast with the claims of the Family Research Council (FRC), who last month said NARTH was

primarily composed of psychiatrists, psychologists, and other professional therapists and counselors who offer ‘sexual reorientation therapy’ to help people overcome unwanted same-sex attractions.

If you keep up with those who fight against GLBT rights at all, you have come to expect no good from an organization called the Family Research Counsel (FRC).  It is headed by Tony Perkins, a man who seems to crave the power and influence of a politician but without any of the accountability.  A Senior Fellow, Peter Sprigg, either wants gays sent out of the country or their lives criminalized, depending on the interview.  Their history is pretty bad, and a simple search will give the reader all they need.

Even with all that in mind, I don’t think I could have imagined what Joe Jervis (Joe.My.God) has uncovered with the help of the Gay City News.  Joe is reporting that the FRC paid $25,000 to lobby Congress against approving a resolution denouncing Uganda’s plan to execute homosexuals  — and he has copies of the official lobbying report to prove it.  The resolution has been hung up in committee for the past four months so it seems it may have worked.

Just to be clear, FRC did not want Congress even to declare that Uganda’s intentions to kill or imprison gays was a bad thing.

I have no words for this one.

Hat Tip: Joe.My.God

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.

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.