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Featured Reports
What Are Little Boys Made Of?
In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.
Slouching Towards Kampala: Uganda’s Deadly Embrace of Hate
When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.
David Benkof: Behind the Mask
At first glance, David Benkof appears to be a young gay man who believes that same-sex marriage will damage the institution of marriage, that there are better options for gay couples than marriage, that the community should join him in prioritizing other more pressing issues, and that the marriage discussion is harming the efforts of gay couples in red states to get recognition for their unions. He also claims that he’s a gay columnist, that he speaks for an influential collection of gay thinkers, and that he is part of the gay and lesbian community and that he shares our goals and dreams. But none of that is true.
“Repeat After Me”: The Reparative Therapy Echo Chamber
The April 2008 edition of the pay-to-publish vanity journal Psychological Reports featured a new report from NARTH. Written by NARTH president A. Dean Byrd, past president Joseph Nicolosi, and Richard W. Potts, the report carries the unwieldy but self-descriptive title, “Clients perceptions of how reorientation therapy and self-help can promote changes in sexual orientation.” While the title describes what the authors meant to show — how clients describe the benefits of reparative therapy — the report itself actually illustrates something very different: the ex-gay movement’s remarkable ability to instill an almost robot-like parroting of ex-gay rhetoric among their clients.
Testing the Premise: Is MRSA The New Gay Plague?
The Toronto Star said that a new study “discover[ed] a new strain” of a super-bug “hitting gay men.” Headlines in Britain screamed, “Flesh-eating bug strikes San Francisco’s gay community,” and anti-gay extremists across America spread the alarm that gays were introducing another plague into “the general population.” But there was a small problem with all of this: None of it is true!
Paul Cameron’s World
In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.
From the Inside: Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out”
On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.
Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"
The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing The Myths
At last, the truth can now be told.
Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!
And don't miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.
Testing The Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?
Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.
Straight From The Source: What the “Dutch Study” Really Says About Gay Couples
Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.
The FRC’s Briefs Are Showing
Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.
Review: The Gay Report
When Karla Jay and Allan Young published The Gay Report in 1979, it quickly a favorite source of statistics for many anti-gay extremists. But before you accepts these statistic at face value, you should examine the inner workings of this survey very carefully. What you learn might surprise you.
Daniel Fetty Doesn’t Count
The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.
News, analysis and fact-checking of anti-gay rhetoric
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RobNYNY1957
June 9th, 2011 | LINK
I was a bit surprised at how effeminate Dr. Rekers was on AC360. Class over inflection of sentences, limp wrist, etc.
BlackDog
June 9th, 2011 | LINK
I noticed that, but more than anything George Rekers struck me as being very, very creepy.
I don’t quite know *why* but a lot of these anti-gay and ex-gay types really creep me out, in a wouldn’t-trust-this-person-with-my-dog sort of way. I feel disgust, on a visceral sort of level, towards them.
I read all the stuff compiled about Kirk, and all I could think about was that if I had a kid, I would never leave them alone with George Rekers, period.
Amicus
June 9th, 2011 | LINK
Is there any indication in their papers on treatment of “aberrant behaviors” that they were open to the “independent” assessment that their *entire hypothesis* might be wrong (not just the assessment of whether their treatment had met its goals)?
What’s more, did they scientifically and ethically assess and disclose the risks to treatment, at all? That is, did they ever consider that they might aggravate the underlying ‘condition’ or create instability, if their hypothesis was wrong?
As for the abiding ethical judgment on their adventures, did they present to their victims, the parents, the facts, as formulated as an hypothesis with the treatment as experimental, with risks?
David in Houston
June 9th, 2011 | LINK
There really should be some kind of civil punishment for Dr. Rekers under the heading of “Crimes against humanity”. The fact that he approved of beatings as a way to reprogram someone’s personality shows what utter contempt he has for the medical profession. Even back then I seriously doubt that any reputable therapist would approve of corporal punishment as a valid psychological treatment.
It makes me really sad that Kirk’s parents weren’t able to figure out that beating a child is ALWAYS wrong. Like I’ve always said, not everyone is cut out to be a parent. (including my own parents)
Amicus
June 9th, 2011 | LINK
I’m reading more of this story and it’s not clear that the UCLA center was involved in “science” at all, yet. Or else, the worst kind of “psychological science”, the kind that makes physical scientists cringe when the word “scientist” is used to describe whatever it is that psychologists “research”.
I might be wrong, to whatever degree, but this quote set me off:
So, what we gather from this is that religious precepts – most likely Christian ethics – got in the way of science, in the way of fully adequate and proper hypothesis formation and testing.
David Ehrenstein
June 9th, 2011 | LINK
UCLA has a LOT to answer for. Who approved bringing Rekers on? What other “Ex-Gay” quacks did the university sponsor? Has it been named in lawsuits over this?
Regan DuCasse
June 9th, 2011 | LINK
We hear constantly that gay people shouldn’t raise children, despite what smarter people know, in that one’s orientation doesn’t influence that of one’s child.
But NO ONE questions how many gay children their straight parents screw up because of being influenced by such anti gay situations.
Being so committed to denying what gender means, or what homosexuality is, is a sickness in itself.
The harmful results, are rarely appraised until too late. If at all.
Treating gender variance as a BAD thing, has left many lives in ruins.
That anyone is allowed to continue the practice given that evidence, is a matter for medical authorities and FEC.
Anyone claiming credentials in psychotherapy should be supporting research on the effects of POSITIVE reinforcement on young people who might be gay or gender variant.
That seems to be the ONE that haven’t tried yet on a widespread basis.
Norm!
June 9th, 2011 | LINK
I agree with David Ehrenstein’s comment, where is UCLA in all this? Clearly, it was UCLA’s prestigious reputation that led the Murphy’s to trust the institution. They should, at the very least, issue an apology.
homer
June 9th, 2011 | LINK
I wish the Murphy family would sue Rekers for every sordid penny. He does not deserve the money he made as an expert witness from the States of Arkansas and Florida.
Henry Hall
June 9th, 2011 | LINK
The really really shocking thing is that exactly this kind of thing is still being done to little boys by “eminent psychologists” even now, in 2011.
Ray
June 9th, 2011 | LINK
Maybe it’s because I’m deaf and have to view the AC360 series with closed captions, but speaking from that view, AC360′s treatment of this simply doesn’t have the power of Jim’s investigation. The TV version strikes me as superficial and Jim’s writing is filled with rich and deeply personal detail.
I’m so very grateful for Jim Burroway and Timothy Kincaid. They find a way to speak about gay lives that dignify us, make us the human being we are, without shading or distorting the truth.
CPT_Doom
June 9th, 2011 | LINK
Ray, I don’t doubt that closed captioning may have “dulled” the CNN story a bit – they rely a lot on the emotion being expressed by the family, for instance, and not only does CC not show that, the CC often is a bit behind the report, so gets confusing. However in general pieces like this on the TV cannot have the impact of research like Jim’s. AC360 is devoting less than 25 minutes, total, over three nights, while Jim’s report takes at least 3 – 4 times that to just read.
As for UCLA and the approval of this “research,” it is sad but true that Psychology as a science was woefully inadequate back in those days. I was a psych major in the 80s and we learned about the lack of ethical considerations, never mind the lack of a formal definition of what “mental illness” is, which the APA did not have until 1973 (the quest for this definition was directly responsible for the dropping of homosexuality from the DSM).
Grandmère Mimi
June 9th, 2011 | LINK
Jim, thank you again for your research and writing the story. UCLA? Yes, those were different times, when we put implicit trust in doctors and scientists. When will someone at UCLA step up and take responsibility? Where are the apologies? Surely, they know better now.
Reading the story knocked the wind out of me, I can tell you, and I probably shouldn’t even be writing here until I take time to recover. I said elsewhere in a comment that I had to take the story in two parts because it was just too painful and tragic to read all at once.
Thank you again.
ScottLanter
June 9th, 2011 | LINK
It was shocking to see how effeminate Rekers is. I wish CNN had pursued a more in-depth interview with him. Rekers was so desperate to hide behind pseudo-scientific language and double talk. According to Rekers own logic, there needs to be a lengthy analysis of why he has failed to develop any outwardly masculine mannerisms.
ScottLanter
June 9th, 2011 | LINK
The Jewish community demanded that Dr. Mengele be held accountable for his ‘experiments’. Shouldn’t Dr. Rekers be held to the same standard by the gay community?
Zoe Brain
June 9th, 2011 | LINK
To see where George Rekers is coming from, you need to read a work he edited in 1986 : The Christian World View of the Family , Edited by Dr. George Rekers, Ph.D., Chairman; Jerry Regier, M.A.B.S., Co-Chairman; With contributions by members of the Family Committee of The Coalition on Revival; Dr. Jay Grimstead, General Editor; E. Calvin Beisner, M.A., Assistant to the General Editor:
“We deny that the state has a right to impose unrealistic standards on families; that the so-called offenses of “emotional neglect,” “emotional abuse,” “educational neglect,” etc., which form the bulk of substantiated reports of “child abuse and neglect,” are in fact crimes against children;
…
We affirm that Biblical spanking may cause temporary and superficial bruises or welts that do not constitute child abuse, but that proven brutality to a child resulting in permanent disfigurement or serious injury should be punished by law”
There’s a lot of stuff there about how both Homosexuality and Masturbation should be illegal, how a proper wife should be submissive and obedient to her husband and not go out to work etc.
TomTallis
June 9th, 2011 | LINK
Yet UCLA was the academic home of Evelyn Hooker, the first psychologist to declare that gay people were just fine the way they were, and this was a decade before this Rekers episode.
Isn’t there a horror movie called “Reeker?”
Irish Janet
June 10th, 2011 | LINK
Whenever someone says they can change someone’s inborn behavior scares me. It is solely based on religious prejudices. And for this person, definitely not a doctor, and groups like them as just as dangerous as the KKK.
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