It takes a Stephen Colbert to do justice to the lunacy—but toxic lunacy—of the Rev. Dr. Rekers saga. Once again, Joe.My.God is all over this story, and has a link to Colbert’s commentary about Rekers yesterday.
Which is full of delicious one-liners like, “Technically, I believe, he was looking for someone to hoist his sack.”
Joe Jervis is also reporting that bloggers have shut down the Facebook page of Attorney General Bill McCollum of Florida, as they log in at that site in the past two days to ask McCollum how he justifies paying $87,000 of taxpayer funds to bring the Rekers fraud show to Florida.
Which is full of delicious one-liners like, “Technically, I believe, he was looking for someone to hoist his sack.”
Joe Jervis is also reporting that bloggers have shut down the Facebook page of Attorney General Bill McCollum of Florida, as they log in at that site in the past two days to ask McCollum how he justifies paying $87,000 of taxpayer funds to bring the Rekers fraud show to Florida.
The Rekers story is getting abundant national publicity, and I’m glad that this is happening. It’s outrageous that states like Florida and Arkansas would shell out tax revenues needed for enterprises like education, to give carte blanche to a bogus “scientist” spreading destructive lies about gay citizens and our lives. People whose money has been used to fund such enterprises (complete with European vacations and rent boys) should rightly be up in arms about the misuse of their tax dollars.
Interestingly enough, several e-friends have told me that radio host Thom Hartmann mentioned my posting about Rekers on his national program yesterday. A friend and supporter of this blog, Frederick Clarkson at Talk to Action, had seen the post and asked if I would be willing to cross-post it at the Talk to Action site. I did so, and I believe it’s that version that Thom Hartmann read. (And I’m very grateful to Fred Clarkson for inviting me to cross-post.)
The publicity this story is generating will, I hope, make more and more folks take a closer look at the “ex-gay” scam and the harm it does to many people. The list of recommended blogs here at Bilgrimage contains links to outstanding organizations like Truth Wins Out, which have been tracking the disinformation of the “ex-gay” movement for a long time, and to bloggers like Peterson Toscano, whose first-hand testimony about the damage inflicted by bogus “conversion” therapy is extremely important. It’s important to note, too, the close ties of people like Rekers and this bogus science to major anti-gay organizations whose goals go beyond conversion therapy—to groups like Focus on the Family, which Rekers helped found, and Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council, which is now trying desperately to paddle away from the Rekers boat.
If the Rekers story causes more of us to think more carefully about the thoroughly discredited “ex-gay” movement (and its many right-wing affiliates), which has been repudiated by one respected medical and psychological group after another, and about the pain it causes many people (and the manifold hypocrisies it enfolds), this story will have done us all a valuable service.
The graphic is the first page of an April 1935 letter that Sigmund Freud wrote to an American mother of a gay son telling her that sexual orientation is an innate characteristic and cannot be altered by conversion therapy. The full letter with a transcript is at the Queerty website.
