Will “The Sissy Boy Experiment” Finally Mean Death For “Ex-Gay Therapy”?

Read all the stories in “The Sissy Boy Experiment” series section. We’ll be adding more throughout the day today and the rest of the week.

Will “The Sissy Boy Experiment,” a three-part series from CNN’s Anderson Cooper which began Monday night, be the death of so-called “ex-gay” therapy? It should be. So-called “ex-gay therapy,” the pseudo-science of changing someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity to heterosexual, also labeled “conversion therapy,” has gotten its final nail in the coffin, thanks in large part to author Jim Burroway, whose extensive research — even more in-depth and broader that CNN’s – uncovered the fact that the man responsible for the so-called ex-gay movement, George Alan Rekers, fraudulently reported on a pivotal study — his study, as a student — back in the 1970s.

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

The study? A four-year old boy, known as “Kraig” to millions who read the 20+ research papers Rekers published on him, had exhibited so-called “feminine” characteristics early on. “Kraig” went through Rekers’ emotionally and physically violent aversion therapy — not just “praying away the gay” — but attempts to physically beat homosexuality out of him. Rekers falsely reported that Kurt Murphy, aka “Kraig,” became a well-adjusted heterosexual man intent on marrying a woman and having a family. In reality, “Kraig,” after ten months of “therapy,” between the ages of four and five, attempted suicide at seventeen, and succeeded after a miserably unhappy life, at 38.

“In 1972, George Alan Rekers wrote a dissertation that earned him a Ph.D. in Psychology,” Burroway writes at Box Turtle Bulletin. “His dissertation described his success in treating three young boys whom he diagnosed as having a ‘cross-gender disturbance.’ The boys’ treatments were part of a federally funded study at UCLA. Two years later, Rekers and his mentor, Dr. Ivar Lovaas, published a groundbreaking paper based in Rekers’s dissertation. It featured one boy in particular, five-year-old Kraig. That paper launched Rekers’s career, and he would feature or mention Kraig’s case in at least twenty papers, books and chapters in the forty years following his dissertation.

“In 1987 another UCLA researcher, Dr. Richard Green, published a book, titled The ‘Sissy Boy Syndrome’ and the Development of Homosexuality. Kraig — this time his name would be changed to ‘Kyle’ — was one of a dozen feminine boys featured in his treatise on cross-gender behavior. Green interviewed Kyle’s parents when Kyle was five, Kyle and his mother when Kyle was seventeen, and Kyle again when he was eighteen. That last interview left Green considerably more ambivalent about Kyle’s sexuality than Rekers was. Rekers described Kraig as ‘indistinguishable from any other boy in terms of gender-related behaviors,’ but Green wrote that Kyle was bisexual. Green also revealed that Kyle tried to commit suicide when he was seventeen. Nevertheless, Green concluded that no one was ‘obviously harmed by treatment.’ (emphasis his).”

 

Rekers wrote a questionably falsely dissertation on a fraudulent research study that not only earned him his Ph.D., and not only created his entire “ex-gay therapy” career, but with that fraudulent research, Rekers started an entire movement of people who, based on Rekers’ research, believed that people could be turned straight.

 

So already it’s clear that Rekers either falsified his Ph.D. dissertation, lied, or didn’t deserve the degree based on amazingly sloppy reporting of his so-called “research.”

This is not only monumental, but, in my personal opinion, should be criminal. Also what should be criminal: the so-called “ex-gay therapy” industry takes in hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Think about this: Rekers wrote a questionably falsely dissertation on a fraudulent research study that not only earned him his Ph.D., and not only created his entire “ex-gay therapy” career, but with that fraudulent research, Rekers started an entire movement of people who, based on Rekers’ research, believed that people could be turned straight.

(As an aside, one must ask why no aversion therapy studies were made to see if people could be “turned” homosexual.)

Rekers co-founded or had high-level associations with several anti-gay organizations, groups which have now disowned him, including NARTH — the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality — on whose boeard of directors he sat, and the now-certified hate group, Family Research Council, which he co-founded along with the notoriously homophobic James Dobson.

The ACLU in 2004 wrote, “Rekers relies on the discredited research of Paul Cameron, an anti-gay “”researcher”” who was kicked out of the American Psychological Association for misrepresenting the research regarding homosexuality.”

Burroway writes that Rekers “projected an image as a successful clinical psychologist and a respected professor. And those credentials opened doors for him as an expert witness before Congressional committees and courtroom judges.” Indeed. For example, Rekers was paid $120,000 for testimony against same-sex couples adopting in Florida.

Rekers was taken down last year when two reporters in Miami photographed him with a 20-year old male companion who he paid to “carry his luggage,” during a trip to Europe. While that may have ended his career, it must be noted that Rekers’ career ended lives.

Isn’t that criminal?

The New Civil Rights Movement will have follow-up pieces on Rekers, the ex-gay movement, and the terribly sad story of Kurt Murphy, aka “Kraig,” whom, we believe, successfully completed suicide because of George Rekers.

Images: top: CNN. Insert: Kurt Murphy, age 3, courtesy of Jim Burroway and Kaytee Murphy.