George Alan Rekers has a distinguished history in the LGBT community. A colorful record as lively and prudent as felon Scott Lively himself.
While it is colorful, it is anything from bright and cheery. Rekers, a very outspoken and proud Baptist minister, who is a discredited psychologist, has published many papers and two books on what he feels homosexuality and gender identity is and what it isn’t. I quote again “what he feels” because his data is anything but science.
In his one online publication Summary of Expert Opinions on How Parenting by Homosexuality-Behaving Parent Figures Affects Child Adjustment and Well-Being (PDF document), he makes several references to work used on abusive parents and single parents and then labels them as proof that same-sex couples are detriments to children. He uses a plethora of religious sources– rather than use sources from the American Psychological Association, the National Association of Social Workers, or the American Academy of Pediatrics — to come to his conclusion that children only do well, and should only be raised, by a mother and a father, and that homosexual parents are dangerous to children (Summary, page 1-2).
Rekers continues on in this paper to say that all the data and evidence that supports same sex couples are equally able to be nurturing and loving parents is false because those students only factor in to foster children, which Rekers claims to all have psychological problems, that the samples were too small and not random, and they have not been done for a long enough period of time (summary page 1). Rekers also states that homosexual couples are far less stable than heterosexual ones and that homosexual people are all psychologically damaged. He also states that same-sex couples in more tolerant cultures like the Netherlands are quite unstable because they are psychologically damaged.
These quotes are not from any mental-health associations, but from the religious University of St. Thomas Law School as his source for this data. This analysis by Rekers could not be further from scientific evidence. A multitude of studies have been done by Dr. Judith Stacey, the APA and the American Sociological Association that disprove these myths. More so Dr. John Gottman has done many studies that conclude that gay couples in the US and in places like The Netherlands are actually more stable (Gottman).
What is sad about this paper that Rekers wrote and his other works is that it repeats the same tired stereotypes about gay people being psychologically damage because they are gay. This has been disproven even by people like Dr. Evelyn Hooker back in the early Fifties. What we know now is that LGBT people face higher rates of suicide, depression and anxiety not because they are gay but because of the social oppression they face (Udavis). Despite Rekers quoting that gay parents should not be adoptive parents of any type, and they should not even be around children, he makes no mention at all of people who suffer from real psychological disorders and their ability to parent; concluding that his work is anything but unbiased. Rekers often uses religion in his work to define marriage and what a family is throughout his work but rarely takes into account what other religions outside of his own have to say on this issue (Summary, page 3).
As for being a board member to the Family Research Council, a hate group labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, he was involved in to court hearings as an “expert witness” for dependents of anti-gay bans on adoption in the state of Arkansas and Florida. His testimony was so outlandish that the circuit judge in Arkansas, Judge Timothy White declared Rekers testimony “extremely suspect” and “promoting his own personal agenda” (In re: Gill). The Judge Cindy Lederman declared:
“Dr. Rekers’ testimony was far from a neutral and unbiased recitation of the relevant scientific evidence. Dr. Rekers’ beliefs are motivated by his strong ideological and theological convictions that are not consistent with the science. Based on his testimony and demeanor at trial, the court can not consider his testimony to be credible nor worthy of forming the basis of public policy.” (In re: Gill trial court decision and order, PDF document, page 23.)
Within the same case Rekers stated that Native Americans were all alcoholics and should also not be adoptive parents (Gill pg. 21). Rekers concluded that a child living with his same sex parents for even a period of over ten years should be removed and that the child will adjust in only a year of being with a opposite sex family (Gill pg 21). The court docket of this case does not exacerbate when it states that people were astonished at this heavily biased, scientifically void and outlandish statement that is contrary to all childhood development studies.
Rekers’ wonderful history of working with junk science groups like NARTH and hate groups like the Family Research Council prove to be the pinnacle of his background. His work is not just questionable but its overwhelmingly false, bias, and irresponsible, going over a micrometer just to call it lavishly mean. With people like Rekers heading up the our enemies ideologies and defendants of anti-gay adoptions and marriage bans our equality seems more like a hop, skip and then a jump away from reality. Rekers, while continually claiming that LGBT people are mentally ill and unstable seems in the process of his own work to undulate that phrase enough as to question his own mental stability. Falling on the ideas of Paul Joseph Goebbels, Rekers must believe that if he tells his lie long enough and loud enough someone will eventually believe it. Even with his constant “crazy man” undulation of anti-gay rhetoric, Rekers is zero for two in the battle in the courts. It would be suffice to say that earlier retirement from his anti-gay campaign seems like a smart idea that has yet to ignite that burnt out bulb in his brain.
Sources
Shaping Your Child’s Sexual Identity. ISBN 0801077133
Growing Up Straight: What Families should Know about Homosexuality. ISBN 978-0802401564
