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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

Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’

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April 26, 2024

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Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a top potential Trump vice presidential running mate pick, revealed in a forthcoming book she “hated” her 14-month old puppy and shot it to death. Massive online outrage ensued, including accusations of “animal cruelty” and “cold-blooded murder,” but the pro-life former member of Congress is defending her actions and bragging she had the media “gasping.”

“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” Noem writes in her soon-to-be released book, according to The Guardian which reports “the dog, a female, had an ‘aggressive personality’ and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.”

“By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going ‘out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life’.”

“Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, ‘grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another’.”

READ MORE: President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

“Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like ‘a trained assassin’.”

Except Cricket wasn’t trained. Online several people with experience training dogs have said Noem did everything wrong.

“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, calling the young girl pup “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

“At that moment,” Noem wrote, “I realized I had to put her down.”

“It was not a pleasant job,” she added, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

The Guardian reports Noem went on that day to slaughter a goat that “smelled ‘disgusting, musky, rancid’ and ‘loved to chase’ Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.”

She dragged both animals separately into a gravel pit and shot them one at a time. The puppy died after one shell, but the goat took two.

On social media Noem expressed no regret, no sadness, no empathy for the animals others say did not need to die, and certainly did not need to die so cruelly.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

But she did use the opportunity to promote her book.

Attorney and legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold says Governor Noem’s actions might have violated state law.

“You slaughtered a 14-month-old puppy because it wasn’t good at the ‘job’ you chose for it?” he asked. “SD § 40-1-2.3. ‘No person owning or responsible for the care of an animal may neglect, abandon, or mistreat the animal.'”

The Democratic National Committee released a statement saying, “Kristi Noem’s extreme record goes beyond bizarre rants about killing her pets – she also previously said a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry out her pregnancy, does not support exceptions for rape or incest, and has threatened to throw pharmacists in jail for providing medication abortions.”

Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View” wrote, “There are countless organizations that re-home dogs from owners who are incapable of properly training and caring for them.”

The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson blasted the South Dakota governor.

“Kristi Noem is trash,” he began. “Decades with hunting- and bird-dogs, and the number I’ve killed because they were chicken-sharp or had too much prey drive is ZERO. Puppies need slow exposure to birds, and bird-scent.”

“She killed a puppy because she was lazy at training bird dogs, not because it was a bad dog,” he added. “Not every dog is for the field, but 99.9% of them are trainable or re-homeable. We have one now who was never going in the field, but I didn’t kill her. She’s sleeping on the couch. You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit. Unsporting and deliberately cruel…but she wrote this to prove the cruelty is the point.”

Melissa Jo Peltier, a writer and producer of the “Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan” series, also heaped strong criticism on Noem.

“After 10+ years working with Cesar Millan & other highly specialized trainers, I believe NO dog should be put down just because they can’t or won’t do what we decide WE want them to,” Peltier said in a lengthy statement. “Dogs MUST be who they are. Sadly, that’s often who WE teach them to be. And our species is a hot mess. I would have happily taken Kristi Noem’s puppy & rehomed it. What she did is animal cruelty & cold blooded murder in my book.”

READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

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OPINION

President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

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3 days ago

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April 26, 2024

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President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person  interview.

“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”

“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”

But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”

Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.

Thursday evening the Times put out a “scorching” statement, as Politico later reported, not on the newspaper’s website but on the company’s corporate website, not addressing the Politico piece directly but calling it “troubling” that President Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”

Media watchers and critics pushed back on the Times’ statement.

READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

“NYT issues an unprecedented statement slamming Biden for ‘actively and effectively avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists during his term’ and claiming it’s their ‘independence’ that Biden dislikes, when it’s actually that they’re dying to trip him up,” wrote media critic Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch.

Froomkin also pointed to a 2017 report from Poynter, a top journalism site published by The Poynter Institute, that pointed out the poor job the Times did of interviewing then-President Trump.

Others, including former Biden Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, debunked the Times’ claim President Biden hasn’t given interviews to independent journalists by pointing to Biden’s interviews with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a 20-minute sit-down interview with veteran journalist John Harwood for ProPublica.

Former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now a media critic who publishes Stop the Presses, offered a more colorful take of Biden’s decision to go on Howard Stern.

The Times itself just last month reported on a “wide-ranging interview” President Biden gave to The New Yorker.

Watch the video and read the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

 

 

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CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial

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April 26, 2024

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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.

“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.

“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.

On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”

On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”

After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:

“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.

“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

 

 

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