Rekers Hired at Urging of FL Atty Gen McCollum

Florida Attorney General and Republican candidate for Governor Bill McCollum is taking increasing heat for paying $120,000 to George Alan Rekers to testify in a court challenge to the state's gay ban.  McCollum has tried to place the blame for hiring Rekers on the Department of Children and Families, and his spokesperson said DCF selected him.  Today, the Florida Tribune has reported that McCollum personally urged the state to hire Rekers. 

"McCollum wrote a July 2007 letter to then DCF Secretary Bob Butterworth where he said his legal team “strongly” recommended the hiring of Rekers, a psychologist once on the faculty of the University of South Carolina and who helped found the Family Research Council back in the ‘80s.


“They believe that this expert and his testimony are necessary to ensure a successful result in this case,’’ wrote McCollum in the letter obtained by the Florida Tribune.

McCollum in his letter noted that initially DCF refused to hire Rekers, due primarily to the potential cost of his fees. Instead the child welfare agency wanted to only hire Walter Schumm, a professor of family studies at Kansas State University.

“Dr. Schumm is a good expert, but his areas of expertise are different from Dr. Rekers,’’ wrote McCollum. “Our attorneys handling this case have searched long and hard for other expert witnesses with comparable expertise to Dr. Rekers and have been unable to identify any who would be available for this case."

McCollum knew or should have known that Rekers' testimony had been found to have no credibility by a Florida circuit judge and by the Arkansas Supreme Court.  He also knew or should have known that Rekers' theories about gays have long since been debunked.  He urged his hiring at $120,000 in taxpayer money anyway. 
More at Joe.My.God

Rekers Was Paid $120,000 in Florida Tax Dollars

Earlier, I posted that Family Research Council founder and rent boy procurer Rev. Dr. George Rekers was paid $87,000 by the Florida Attorney General's office to testify in a challenge to the state's gay adoption ban.  That was bad enough.  In fact, Rekers was paid $120,000 and his cohort, Walter Schumm, was paid an additional $36,000 to spread malicious, debunked theories about gay parenting.  Even worse, Florida Attorney General and GOP candidate for governor, Bill McCollum, has tried to pawn this off on the Department of Children and Families, even though the money was paid from the Attorney General's accounting department.  You can visit McCollum's campaign Facebook page here and express your thoughts on this matter.  You can also go here and sign the Equality Florida petition to hold McCollum accountable.

Via Joe.My.God

Rekers' Rent Boy Speaks

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USC Erases George Rekers

First, the Family Research Council erased rent boy patron, "ex-gay" "expert," and FRC founder George Rekers from their website as if he never existed.  Then FRC pretty boy Tony Perkins pretended to have no idea who he was.  Now the University of South Carolina medical school, which until yesterday featured Rekers as a professor emeritus, has scrubbed him from the site.   So it was OK to feature him as a distinguished professor emeritus while he was spreading his discredited lies about gay people, ruining gay lives and ripping apart gay families but it's not OK now that he's been caught with a rent boy? 
Um...go Cocks? 

I went to USC for law school.  How embarassing.

Colbert on Rekers and his Rent Boy

I can't get the video to load on this site, but you've got to go here and see Stephen Colbert take on the Rev. Dr. George Rekers and his rent boy.

Rekers Paid $87,000 by Florida Taxpayers to Fight Gay Adoption

Did you wonder how Reverend Dr. George Rekers got the dough to finance a 10-day trip to Europe with a rent boy?  It may be the $87,000 tax dollars he and an associate were paid by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum to testify in a recent court challenge to the state's ban on gay adoption.  According to Equality Florida:

"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.”

Nadine Smith, Equality Florida's Executive Director, said:

"It is disgraceful that the attorney general used taxpayer dollars to compensate this discredited bigot-for-hire," said Smith. "It shows just how low they have to scrape to find anyone even willing to defend this awful ban that denies children permanent loving homes."

Read more here and here. 

The picture at top is from the Miami New Times, which broke this story.  It's of Rekers and his rent boy at Miami International Airport, returning from the jaunt to Europe.  Keep in mind that Rekers said he hired the rent boy to carry his luggage because he couldn't do any heavy lifting. 

Outrageous.

Rekers Eraced From FRC History

Wow.  That was fast.  Joe.My.God has found that the anti-gay Family Research Council has scrubbed any mention of co-founder George Rekers from his website in the wake of his rent boy scandal.  On Rekers' own site, he brags that he was a founder of FRC and includes a link to FRC's site so you can read more about it.  Follow that link and you find nothing about Rekers.  It's as if their founder never existed.  That's what happens to homosexuals in their world when they are outed.  They disappear.  They just want them to go away so they can pretend they don't exist. 

Family Research Council Founder and NARTH Board Member Caught With Rent Boy

George Alan Rekers, a founder, along with James Dobson, of the Family Research Council, was caught returning to Miami from a 10-day trip to Europe with a young man he hired from rentboy.com, according to the Miami New Times.  The rent boy, called Lucien in the article, had all expenses paid by Rekers.  Rekers is a Baptist minister and a leading voice in the fight against gay adoption and marriage equality.  According to the article:

"Rekers is a board member of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), an organization that systematically attempts to turn gay people straight. And the Huffington Post recently singled out Rekers as a member of the American College of Pediatricians — an official-sounding outfit in Gainesville that purveys lurid, youth-directed literature accusing gays of en masse coprophilia. (In an email, the college's Lisa Hawkins wrote, "ACPeds feels privileged to have a scholar of Dr. Rekers' stature affiliated with our organization. I am sure you will find Prof. Rekers to be an immaculate clinician/scholar, and a warm human being.")"

According to the article, both Rekers and Lucien admit that they met through rentboy.com.  Hilariously, Rekers claims that he only hired Lucien to lift his bags because he had surgery and can't handle heavy lifting.  The New Times easily debunks this:

"To arrive at Lucien's site, Rekers must have accepted Rentboy.com's terms of use, thereby acknowledging he was not offended by graphic sexual material. He then would have been transported to a front page covered with images of naked, tumescent men busily sodomizing each other.  Then Rekers must have performed a search. Did he want a "rentboy," a "sugar daddy," or a "masseur"? In what country? And what city? If Rekers searched for a rent boy in Miami, he would have found approximately 80 likely candidates. He must have scrolled down the first page, past the shirtless bears and desperate ex-models, and on to page 2. There, at last, was Lucien."

Seems like a lot trouble to go to to hire somebody to pick up your suitcase. 

Maybe someday people will realize that the anti-gay right is filled with repressed homosexuals who can't deal with their personal issues in an adult way and therefore project their self-loathing onto the rest of society.  These people are disgusting. 

More about Rekers at Truth Wins Out.