If you’ve watched Leno, Colbert or some of the other late-night shows, you might have heard about the George Rekers scandal. I’ve got a few thoughts of my own that I decided to “put down on paper”, as it were. First, though, I’ll give my readers a bit of a Rekers tutorial.
| As is true of all too many anti-gay religious bigots, George Rekers is a homosexual. |
George Rekers is a Professor of Neuropsychiatry & Behavioral Science, and a Baptist Minister. He co-founded the Family Research Council with Dr. James Dobson, and is on the Board of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). In other words, Rekers is pretty high up on the list of backward, homophobic nut jobs that constantly oppress and vilify innocent gays.
Of course, he’s also a lying, cowardly hypocrite. As is true of all too many anti-gay religious bigots, George Rekers is a homosexual. He was discovered returning from a week-long trip to Europe in the company of a rent boy (male sex worker catering to men). Of course he’s lying and denying, but when the gay blogosphere smells bigot blood in the water, their capacity for getting to the bottom of a scandal is unparalleled.
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- Jo-Vanni Roman
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- George Rekers
The Kid.
Therein lies my first concern. Unzipped, the magazine who started really digging into this story, apparently spared no thought for the safety of the story’s ultimate victim, the rentboy, Jo-Vanni Roman. I think of him as a victim in the sense that he did nothing dishonest. He plied his trade, as he and Rekers agreed he would; he seems to even have come to trust Rekers at some level. Then – because of the hatred and self-loathing of his client – Jo-Vanni’s life became national news, and his services a national joke.
The only blogger out there who seems to have any sense of this is Joe Jervis, at J.M.G. I don’t think Joe can be commended enough for his efforts to ensure that Jo-Vanni has a support network to help him manage the media and get his life back in order. I only hope that the kid recognizes those efforts for what they are, and avails himself of them.
The Real Story
Here’s the other thing that most of the big bloggers don’t seem to have grasped: Media organizations in Florida don’t spend their time trying to expose bigoted religious conservatives. The fact that the Miami Herald showed up at an airport to photograph Rekers and Roman means that someone pointed them in his direction and spent time convincing them that his hypocrisy was actually newsworthy. That’s the real story here – someone had to have already known about Rekers, and been angry enough to betray him. Perhaps one of his several adopted sons? Only time and a lot of further investigation will tell.
Is There A Cure?
And finally, one last thought – a prediction, really. Unlike Ted Haggard, Rekers has build his reputation, and indeed, his career, on curing homosexuals of their evil urges. He has professed a belief that the Bible is the source of all true morality. His hypocrisy has left him with nothing. I don’t believe we’ll find him repenting, submitting to the “guidance” of other bigoted preachers, and becoming a straight man. I think he will spend the rest of his life digging himself ever deeper into this hole – seeking out the precious few gullible enough to believe he was framed by the “liberal media”, and poisoning minds in some backwater community college psychology program.
