As we've all heard by now, NARTH officer and Focus of the Family co-founder Dr. George Rekers was caught taking a male prostitute with him on a 10-day trip through Europe. The scandal is still in the denial-and-damage-control phase, as Reker first claimed that Lucien was just there to "carry his luggage," and FotF is frantically pretending not to know who Rekers is.
Rekers is now trying Excuse #2 : "Like John the Baptist and Jesus, I have a loving Christian ministry to homosexuals and prostitutes in which I share the Good News of Jesus Christ with them...I spent a great deal of time sharing scientific information on the desirability of abandoning homosexual intercourse, and I shared the Gospel of Jesus Christ with him in great detail."
For $1000 a day plus travel expenses. Suuuure.
Here's the part that isn't funny.
Rekers was paid $87,000 by the state of Florida to testify in favor of the GLBT adoption ban. Among other things, he called GLBT people "mentally unstable."
But he couldn't leave bad enough alone, and his testmony
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.'
What makes this even more grotesque is the history here. Generations of American Indian children were taken from their families and cut off from any contact with their Indian heritage. In 1978, the Indian Child Welfare Act became a federal law, requiring (among other things) that Indian foster children be placed with relatives or Indian foster families when possible, and that tribes have the option of taking jurisdiction over child protective cases involving Indian children.
While NARTH's reason for existence is homophobia, this isn't its first embrace of racism. In 2006, there was a explosion of anger over a bizarre article by Gerald Schoenewolf which claimed, that all civil rights movements (whether for people of color, women or GLBT's) are "irrational" and "destructive." He even defended slavery:
Africa at the time of slavery was still primarily a jungle... . Life there was savage ... and those brought to America, and other countries, were in many ways better off.
This man was on NARTH's Science Advisory Committee.
I don't think it's an accident that racism and homophobia are so frequently found together. Schoenewolf probably explained it best in his book The Art of Hating :
Many people talk about hate, but few know how to hate well.
I think NARTH has found its new motto.