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Hey, George, How’s That Ex-Gay Hopey-Changey Thing Working Out?

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“Ex-gay.” It means someone who believes they were once gay, lesbian, or bisexual, but no longer affirms that identity, usually after intervention of “conversion therapy.” It is a widely discredited pseudo-science made popular in the early 1980s.

This week, the media is in an uncontrollable, gleeful hysteria over the Miami New Times’ report that “ex-gay” activist, professional gay-hater and Baptist minister George Alan Rekers, was caught and photographed returning from a one-week European vacation with a twenty-year old gay male prostitute he “found” on the gay sex site rentboy.com. Amusingly, Rekers initially explained that he was unaware of the young man’s vocation, then claimed his physician had instructed him to hire someone to “lift my luggage,” as he had recently had surgery, then claimed he was doing the Lord’s work.

Rekers told Joe Jervis of Joe.My.God. the following:

“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).”

There might have been something about washing the feet of Lepers in there too…

George Alan Rekers literally is a professional gay-hater. The sixty-one year old has made his living talking, writing, and testifying in court against homosexuality, homosexuals, and he helped create the “ex-gay” industry.

Rekers’ resume currently lists him as “President/CEO” of InterAct International, where he claims to have “[f]ounded and directed university-campus programs locally and internationally to present practical integration of academic disciplines such as business & psychology with Christian ethics.”

Let’s take a look at his “accomplishments.”

Rekers, along with another professional gay-hater, James Dobson, co-founded the Family Research Council (FRC) in 1983. (Remember in February when FRC’s Peter Sprigg told Chris Matthews “gay behavior should be outlawed?”) FRC is a right-wing Christian lobbying group that was part of another professional gay-hating group that Dobson founded, Focus on the Family. (FOF sponsored the controversial Tim Tebow Superbowl anti-abortion ad.)

(By the way, Dobson is supporting Tea Party extreme right-wing candidate Rand Paul.)

Along with co-founding FRC, Rekers co-founded NARTH — The National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality — another gay-hating right-wing Christian group.

In The Huffington Post, Alvin McEwen (author of “Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters”) calls NARTH “an organization espousing scientifically inaccurate beliefs that gays can turn straight,” and the American College of Pediatricians “a shell group attempting to bring a level of credibility to anti-gay distortions.”

NARTH lauds Rekers with this bio:

“Dr. Rekers has served as an invited expert for committees of the US Congress, and for the White House staff, and for several presidential cabinet agencies. He is an ABPP Diplomate in Clinical Psychology, a Fellow of the American Academy of Clinical Psychology, and a recipient of the Sigmund Freud Award from NARTH. Dr. Rekers published the first empirical treatment studies demonstrating that childhood cross-gender identity could be reversed, thereby offering prevention of some forms of adulthood homosexual and transsexual development. Professor Rekers was an expert for the legal defense of the Florida law prohibiting child adoption by homosexuals, which was upheld by the US Supreme Court in 2005.”

Rekers also makes his money writing books. Lots of books. Right now on Amazon.com you can buy some of Rekers’ books:

  • “Shaping your child’s sexual identity,”

  • “Growing up straight: What families should know about homosexuality,”

  • “Gender identity disorders,”

  • “Who am I, Lord?: Discovering your spiritual gift and where God wants you to use it,”

  • “The Christian world view of the family”

Rekers self-created “expert” status on homosexuals, homosexuality, and “ex-gays” also helps him fill his wallet by appearing in court as an “expert witness.” Equality Florida this week reported,

“George Rekers, the “expert” witness hired by Attorney General Bill McCollum to defend Florida’s anti-gay adoption ban…was one of only two witnesses Attorney General Bill McCollum called in an effort to reverse a Miami judge who ruled Florida’s adoption ban- the only one in the country- is unconstitutional.

“McCollum paid Rekers and a colleague t$87,000 for testimony that called gay people mentally unstable and advised that the ban should be expanded to include Native Americans because, Rekers claimed, they are also at much higher risk of mental illness and substance abuse.

“They would tend to hang around each other,” Rekers testified. “So the children would be around a lot of other Native Americans who are … doing the same sorts of things.”

But it looks like the tide has finally turned for Dr. Rekers. (Yes, believe it or not he is a Ph.D.) Virtually all of the “ex-gay” organizations and those organizations he co-founded have been furiously pulling down and, according to Truth Wins Out, “scrubbing” any mention of Rekers from their websites.

“When news broke yesterday that ex-gay movement godfather George Alan Rekers had hired a male prostitute for a 10-day excursion to Europe, the Family Research Council — which Rekers co-founded — promptly scrubbed its website free of references to Rekers, without admitting the scandal to its readers.

“NARTH, PFOX, Exodus, and Focus on the Family have yet to do so.”

Rekers has been discredited. Sadly, it’s very possible in a few years he’ll turn up and go down the same nasty gay-hating path, this time with a new schtick.

But the real story here is not George Alan Rekers. After all the jokes and laughter, after all the tweets about schadenfreude, Facebook messages about hypocrisy, and Colbert jokes about “What boy would Jesus rent?,” what’s left, sadly, are thousands of people Rekers directly or indirectly touched. Anyone who believed in the “ex-gay” concept, anyone who paid Rekers and his organizations, or other “ex-gay” organizations, like Exodus or PFOX.

Rekers caused so many thousands great pain claiming they could be “cured” of their homosexuality. He caused countless millions more — on both sides of the issue — great pain, when they were impacted by his false claims and false research. And now, totally discredited, Rekers has caused these poor souls immeasurable pain by his actions.

Bilerico’s Waymon Hudson asks, “Celebration, Compassion, or somewhere in between?” Rekers doesn’t deserve our sympathy, or our compassion. He lost that right the day he chose to make a career out of hate. Rekers deserves the shunning and “scrubbing” from the history books that is taking place now.

The question remains: How can one man have been allowed, for so many decades, to create an entire industry of lies, and be so handsomely rewarded for it?

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OPINION

‘Have to Get Back to Law and Order’: Trump Declares at NYPD Officer’s Wake

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Donald Trump attended the wake of the slain New York City police officer who was shot and killed while conducting a traffic stop this week. The four-times indicted ex-president demanded America “get back to law and order,” barely days after a New York judge imposed a gag order in the case where the presumptive Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony counts for “falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election,” according to the New York District Attorney.

That damaging information included hush money payments to several women including an adult film actress.

“We have to stop it,” Trump said Thursday, speaking before the cameras about crime as he stood under an umbrella in front of police officers. “We have to stop, we have to get back to law and order. We have to do a lot of things differently because this is not working. This is happening too often.”

“Police are the greatest people we have. There’s nothing and there’s nobody like them. And this should never happen,” Trump said as he lamented how repeat offenders “don’t learn because they don’t respect.”

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

“We’ve got to toughen it up. We’ve got to strengthen it up. It should never be allowed things like they shouldn’t take place and to take place so often,” said Trump, who is out on bail and currently faces 88 felony charges after three were dropped.

The Trump campaign announced that the ex-president had been invited to attend the wake.

“President Trump is moved by the invitation to join NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller’s family and colleagues as they deal with his senseless and tragic death,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, according to The Daily Beast.

The Associated Press added that “Trump has deplored crime in heavily Democratic cities, called for shoplifters to be shot immediately and wants to immunize police officers from lawsuits for potential misconduct. But he’s also demonized local prosecutors, the FBI and the Department of Justice over the criminal prosecutions he faces and the investigation while he was president into his first campaign’s interactions with Russia.”

“He has also embraced those imprisoned for their roles on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of his angry supporters overran police lines and Capitol and local police officers were attacked and beaten.”

Earlier on Thursday NBC News reported on Trump’s mischaracterizations of crime.

“Surging crime levels, out-of-control Democratic cities and ‘migrant crime,'” the network noted. “Former President Donald Trump regularly cites all three at his campaign rallies, in news releases and on Truth Social, often saying President Joe Biden and Democrats are to blame.”

READ MORE: ‘Hunger Games at NBC News’: New McDaniel Revelations Have ‘Enraged’ Staffers, Report Says

“But the crime picture Trump paints contrasts sharply with years of police and government data at both the local and national levels,” NBC added. “FBI statistics released this year suggested a steep drop in crime across the country last year. It’s a similar story across major cities, with violent crime down year over year in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.”

Watch Trump’s remarks below or at this link.

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OPINION

‘Hunger Games at NBC News’: New McDaniel Revelations Have ‘Enraged’ Staffers, Report Says

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The backlash from NBC News’ hiring of Ronna McDaniel is not over. New reporting from Puck, CNN, and The Washington Post reveals the considerable efforts from top NBC and MSNBC brass to recruit, hire, and support the former RNC chair who promoted false election claims, was allegedly involved in helping Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and refused to say Joe Biden had been elected fairly.

Staffers at NBC News and MSNBC were outraged at McDaniel’s hiring, but new details about behind-the-scenes efforts reportedly have increased that outrage.

Some critics are either calling for resignations of NBC News and MSNBC  leadership, or questioning how long they can ride out the mess.

“What is Brian Roberts going to do?” CNN‘s Oliver Darcy asks. “The Comcast boss is watching an unceasing five-alarm fire rage at 30 Rock, scarring the reputation of NBC News and threatening to consume multiple parts of the Cesar Conde-run NBC Universal News Group.”

“Conde has lost control of his organization, prompting industry insiders to wonder how he continues to remain in his role as chairman of the NBC News Group. In the words of one veteran media executive I spoke to Wednesday, ‘It’s inconceivable that he should,'” Darcy writes, saying Conde’s actions and those of his top executives have “hosed gasoline” on the scandal.

READ MORE: Lawmaker Slammed for Claiming College Basketball Players Were Actually ‘Illegal Invaders’

That scandal involves these revelations from Puck’s Dylan Byers, who reports, “bringing McDaniel to 30 Rock had been part of a nearly two-month-long effort that was spearheaded by Budoff Brown and her boss, NBC News President Rebecca Blumenstein, with buy-in from Conde and his deputies at both NBC News and MSNBC.”

“Rashida Jones,” he adds, “the president of MSNBC, was very interested in having McDaniel appear as a contributor on her network, as well.”

But this bombshell has drawn a good deal of attention. Noting how Chuck Todd led off the very public pushback against the hiring of McDaniel, Byers reports, “On Sunday, Budoff Brown reached out to McDaniel’s aide and former chief of staff at the R.N.C., Richard Walters, to see if there were any friends or colleagues who could speak up on her behalf.”

“The two sides also discussed having these folks call attention to what they saw as a double standard—after all, this was the same network that was turning Psaki, a former Biden White House Press Secretary, into a Maddow-adjacent prime time star. Walters later assured Budoff Brown that they’d been able to advance conservative pushback on social media against Todd, specifically, and that this might give NBC News some cover, for which Budoff Brown thanked him.”

CNN, pointing to those details, adds, “staffers inside NBC News are enraged at the fact an executive would have engaged in such behavior.”

Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacobs, who now writes about politics and the media, called for the firing of Jones, Blumenstein, and Budoff Brown.

Other critics are expressing concerns on multiple fronts.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“It’s like the hunger games at @NBCNews. Every day new, horrible stories of journalism & corporate malpractice. Every single one of these managers must go,” observed Jennifer Schulze, a media critic who was a Chicago Sun-Times executive producer, WGN news director, and adjunct college professor of journalism.

She also highlights a Washington Post report that ropes NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt into the mess.

“Every @NBCNews exec who thought hiring a reputed liar & phony elector co-[conspirator] needs to resign or be fired,” Schulze says.

“The @NBCNews managers who recruited & signed an election denier should be out the door, too,” she adds. “Not only was it downright offensive to hire Ronna, it was journalism AND corporate malpractice.”

Pointing to his newsletter, former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer writes, “NBC’s ill-fated decision to hire Ronna McDaniel is a story of a media outlet unwilling to accept the ways Trump changed politics, but it’s also one of the best arguments for Dems need to build our media ecosystem ASAP.”

READ MORE: Comer Refuses to Investigate Trump Family Member Over ‘Influence Peddling’ Allegation

He calls McDaniel’s hiring “evidence” the media has “yet to accept the reality that this is not a normal election between a Republican and a Democrat.” And adds, “An [industry] that prizes objectivity above all else, is incapable of accurately covering an election where one candidate is a normal politician and the other is an insurrectionist. Many in the media would rather stumble into autocracy than take a side.”

Veteran journalist and Sirius XM host Michelangelo Signorile observes, “We couldn’t have asked for a better situation to shine a bright light on the corruption of the corporate media—and its impulse to legitimize MAGA extremism and lawbreakers for profit—than NBC’s hiring former RNC chair, election denier, and Trump enabler Ronna McDaniel.”

And he warns, “The forces that made the coup-plotting former RNC chair a paid contributor are still shaping news and information about this pivotal election.”

 

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News

Lawmaker Slammed for Claiming College Basketball Players Were Actually ‘Illegal Invaders’

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Michigan MAGA Republican state Rep. Matt Maddock is under fire after claiming three buses were “loaded up with illegal invaders.” The buses, according to multiple reports, were actually loaded with the Gonzaga University basketball team arriving for March Madness.

“Happening right now. Three busses just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro. Anyone have any idea where they’re headed with their police escort?” Rep. Maddock wrote on social media Wednesday evening, tagging far-right former U.S. Congressman Pete Hoekstra, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands under Donald Trump and is now the state’s Republican Party chair.

Informed of his error on social media, Rep. Maddock doubled down, and attacked.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“Probably teams for the NCAA Mens Sweet 16 playing at LCA on Friday and Sunday,” a user on X wrote.

“Sure kommie. Good talking point,” Maddock quickly shot back.

ABC affiliate WXYZ executive producer Maxwell White, responding to the Maddock’s original post wrote: “Just to be clear, this was the Gonzaga basketball team. Photos show Gonzaga getting on an Allegiant plane to Detroit for the Sweet 16, and Flight Radar shows a plane from GEG to DTW landed at 7:25 p.m., around the time this photo was posted.”

“This is a wild tweet,” White added, before adding more evidence.

Hoekstra, who was accused of using racism and xenophobia to win his campaign for a U.S. Senate seat (he lost), did not respond directly to Maddock but did repost the apparently false claim.

Michigan State Senate Democratic Majority Whip Mallory McMorrow denounced Maddock’s claim as “dangerous.”

Maddock’s remark also made the national stage when U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell responded.

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

“Hey Einstein,” the California Democrat wrote, “your state is hosting the Sweet 16. Could it be a team bus? If it is, will you resign for your spectacular stupidity?”

In 2021 The Washington Post reported, “Michigan state Rep. Matt Maddock and his wife, Michigan Republican Party co-chair Meshawn Maddock, have repeatedly been called out by fact-checking journalists for promoting baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and falsely suggesting that covid-19 is comparable to the flu.”

See the social media posts above 0r at this link.

 

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