Ex-Gay Therapy Is Child Abuse

If there was any further proof needed that ex-gay therapy, like the kind championed by Exodus International and the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), was child abuse, George Alan Rekers has your evidence.

Rekers has become quite the hot story in recent weeks, given that he spent decades of his life trying to cure people of their homosexuality, only to be caught with a male escort in the Miami airport who went on vacation with him and gave him nude massages. Nothing quite makes for juicy headlines like a commander in the culture war being caught (literally) with his pants down, while a dude rubs his genitals.

Rekers gained notoriety over the decades for helping launch such anti-gay organizations as the Family Research Council and NARTH, as well as testifying in court cases that gay adoption was tantamount to terrorism. For his work on the latter, Rekers was paid handsome sums of money by states like Florida and Arkansas, that employed his services in efforts to ban gay people from adopting kids.

In the wake of his scandal, Rekers has had to disassociate himself with nearly all of the anti-gay organizations he's worked with and/or built over the years, and likewise, these organizations have been all too quick to distance themselves from Rekers. The Family Research Council purged his name from their site within 48 hours after the scandal broke, and then tried to issue a mealy-mouthed statement about how Rekers was hardly involved with the organization (despite having his name listed on the founding documents).

Rekers has in large part become a punchline now, yet another example of an anti-gay leader or politician (Mark Foley, Larry Craig, Ted Haggard) caught up in a gay sex scandal. But it's important not to lose sight of Rekers' work over these years, and the destruction that it caused thousands upon thousands of people. Because while Rekers might never work again in the ex-gay movement, there are still loads of people all too willing to do his work.

And it's his work that the Miami New Times is uncovering this week, describing a scenario from Rekers past where he tried to cure a four-year-old of "effeminate tendencies." But what Rekers put this four-year-old through is, simply put, nothing short of child abuse.

It was the 1970s, and Rekers was at a UCLA clinic he started called "The Feminine Boy Project." The goal of the organization? To break boys of any "feminine" tendencies, to ensure that they wouldn't be openly gay later in life. (That a program called "The Feminine Boy Project" could even exist at a place like UCLA says a whole lot about where the spectrum of conversation existed vis a vis gay rights in the 1970s.)

The story the New Times documents, courtesy of a 2001 article in Brain, Child Magazine, discusses how Rekers was presented with a four-year-old boy in 1974 named "Kraig." Kraig was showing what his parents thought were feminine tendencies, so they brought him to Rekers to be cured. What Rekers did to this boy defies human decency.

First he put Kraig in a "play observation room," and filled it with girl toys and boy toys. Whenever Kraig played with girl toys, Rekers instructed Kraig's mother to ignore her child and show him no affection. Kraig got so desperate for his mother's attention, that he screamed hysterically. Kraig's anxiety level got so high, and his mother so uncomfortable watching her four-year-old scream, that other clinicians within UCLA had to break up the "experiment."

But that didn't end Kraig's ordeal. As the New Times writes, Rekers continued his experimentation on Kraig at the family's home. In one set up, Kraig engaged in a role play where he got blue chips for manly behavior, and red chips for feminine behavior. The blue chips could be cashed in for candy, while the red chips would earn Kraig a beating from his father. And this all continued for two years, until Rekers was satisfied that Kraig had manned up (or at least "manned up" as much as any toddler can).

Of course, it doesn't take a rocket scientist (or, apparently, a UCLA psychologist) to figure out how this turns out. Years down the road, at the age of 18, Kraig tried to commit suicide, ashamed of his life and the "treatment" he received at the hands of Rekers.

Now multiply Kraig's story by 10,000, or 100,000, or maybe even upwards of a few million, and you'll get the grand toll of damage that "ex-gay therapy" has reaped on this world. Does Rekers, as well as the folks at Exodus at NARTH, have blood on their hands?

You better believe it.

Photo credit: John-Morgan