Another Homophobic Hypocrite Outed.

By now just about everyone has heard that George Alan Rekers hired a RentBoy called Lucien to accompany him on a ten-day trip to Europe. He claims that he did not realize the young man was a prostitute, and hired him to help carry his luggage. This is a patently ludicrous defence if one takes even a brief glance at Lucien’s profile(NSFW) or the Rent Boy website (n.b., explicit sexual imagery) from which Rekkers admits having hired Lucien. Moreover, Lucien has told the press he gave Rekkers nude massages "across his penis, thigh... and his anus over the butt cheeks."
In case you’ve been in a medically induced coma since the beginning of the month, Rekkers is a psychologist and anti-gay activist, co-founder of the Family Research Council, and of NARTH, the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality. He is a practitioner of conversion therapy, a pseudo-scientific religious conversion “cure” intended to change homosexuals into heterosexuals.
He is famous for charging state’s attorneys extortionate fees to testify that gays do not make good parents, and should not be allowed to adopt, because they are more likely to suffer from depression, substance abuse, and emotional problems. But then again, he’s also claimed that Native Americans make unsuitable foster parents, because they are at a high risk of alcohol abuse and psychiatric disorders. He has testified that the Boy Scouts of America should be allowed to exclude homosexuals, and has generally done everything within his power to pathologize homosexuality and justify discrimination against gay people. He has written a book, Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity in which he advises parents that they can prevent their children from becoming homosexuals if they punish early signs of behaviour that does not conform to the child’s gender. He has also advised parents that “Biblical spanking may cause temporary and superficial bruises or welts that do not constitute child abuse.” Under intense and repeated criticism for his misuse and distortion of psychology, Rekkers has resigned from American Psychiatric Association.
So, what makes a virulent, anti-gay extremist want to take a 20 year old male prostitute with him on a ten day overseas vacation, and pay him for nude erotic massages?
The easy answer is that he is a hypocrite. And of course, his behaviour is blatantly hypocritical. Another answer that many people have proposed is that Rekkers, and all those other “Christian,” right-wing, anti-gay haters are “closet fags.” The Miami New Times, whose journalists were the first to uncover and report the Rekkers story, included him in a list of Top Ten Outed Right-Wing Homophobes. Also on that list are Richard Curtis, Republican member of the Washington state House of Representatives; Bob Allen, Republican member of Florida House of Representatives; Glenn Murphy, Jr., Chairman, Young Republican National Federation; Roy Ashburn, Republican California state senator Edward L. Schrock, Virginia Congressman; David Dreier, Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives in California; Larry Craig, U.S. Senator from Idaho; Mark Foley, U.S. Representative from Florida; and Ted Haggard, evangelist. When readers commented on names left off the list, the authors answered that it had been difficult to choose only ten. One can understand why Dan Savage pointedly asks, Is Every Right-Wing, Anti-Gay Christian Bigot Sucking Off Rent Boys?
However, in a very thoughtful essay, True/Slant’s Ethan Epstein writes, When people ...charge that Rekers is “gay” or a “fag,” they are engaging in a form of identity-imperialism that they typically detest. And he has a point. We generally uphold people’s right define their own identity: of transsexuals to identify with the gender they experience, mixed race people to identify themselves as they will, and we are increasingly resisting pigeon-holing men who identify as heterosexual, but have occasional same-sex encounters as “gay.” We refer to them as men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM.)
There is a danger, and a disservice to the gay community in pigeon-holing George Rekkers as a “closet gay.” True/Slant’s Laurie Essig writes, it’s so NOT funny because this feeds the stereotype that all homophobes are actually closet cases. This actually happened recently at a local college when homophobic incidents were attributed to someone who is probably actually gay.
Personally, I don’t believe that Rekkers has earned the right to be called “gay.” He has done everything he can to make life miserable for same-sex oriented people, to de-legitimate the concept of gay identity. To “accept” him as a gay person devalues the very idea of “gay.”
How then are we to make sense of this person, of who and what he is?
Ironically, an answer is suggested by Rekkers own supposed profession. Psychologists have long known that when a certain characteristic is intolerable to a person, they will develop a reaction formation against that way of being. Motivated by this defence mechanism, a person will develop the opposite trait(s) to an exaggerated degree. For example, if a man resents his child for limiting his freedom, or for coming between himself and the child’s mother, he may develop into an overly solicitous and over-protective father. He defends himself against the possibility that he might be a “bad” father by becoming a “super-dad,” to assure himself that he is a good father and a good person.
Now, think about what happens to a child growing up in a homophobic* world. All children are exposed to all of our cultural dialogue. That is to say that children who have a homosexual orientation learn all of the negativity, the loathing, the contempt for homosexuality, AND they believe it to the same extent that most other children do. As difficult as coming out is for most gay people, the most difficult person to come out to is oneself.
And some cannot do that. Some cannot bear the thought, nor even the suggestion, that they might be a “loathed and contemptible” homosexual. To a person like Rekkers, raised in an ultra-conservative religious environment, where even the most righteous people stand on the brink of Hell, the idea may be so intolerable that, not only must they never admit it, even to themselves, they must negate it, make it impossible. By becoming the exact opposite, the complete antithesis of ‘a homosexual,’ he preemptively defends himself against any hint that he could ever possibly be homosexual.
But there is no perfect defence, and our real self, our true self, keeps demanding the right to exist, to live our own lives, as we truly are. And so, Rekkers is not a “closet gay.” He was not in the closet. He was in denial that the closet even existed.
We will go on hearing stories of these homophobic hypocrites unwittingly outing themselves. Because we will continue to produce more Rekkers, and Haggards, and Foleys, and Craigs, et al., unless and until we choose not to.
Choosing not to requires speaking out against homophobia every time we encounter it. When you see a gay stereotype on TV, name it as such. When you hear anti-gay sentiments, speak up. Ask your children not to use the phrase “that’s so gay” as a pejorative. Insist that your school board's sex ed curriculum teaches the facts, not some religion's belief, about sexual orientation. When you encounter someone who says that all gays are going to Hell, ask them where those who disobey the injunction to “judge not, for judgement is God’s” will be going?
We must stop producing more Rekkers, who visit untold misery upon others in service of their own denial. We must stop making homosexuality such a terrible and intolerable identity that countless young people kill themselves every year rather than accept themselves for who they are. And make no mistake, through action or through inaction, it is we, you and I, who are responsible.

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* And please, no quibbling over whether anyone is “afraid” of homosexuals. The word refers literally to ‘fear of homosexuality.’ But even that’s too literal, as phobias can be expressed as aversion or even as disgust.

TANSTAAFL

(originally posted April 11, 2008)
It’s an acronym. It stands for “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.” The term was coined by author Robert Heinlein. In days gone by, when food was cheaper, bars would set out food at lunchtime for patrons to help themselves at no extra charge. Of course, the lunch was not free. Its cost was figured into the price charged for the drinks.
Heinlein’s point was that anything that seems free has a price built into it, and we are kidding ourselves if we think we can have something for nothing.
Another way of expressing the same sentiment is that you can only get out what you put in.
Now, once explained, these are fairly simple concepts. Yet they seem to elude us in several important situations.
One place they seem to escape notice is in relationships. Am I saying that relationships come at a cost? Of course they do. The cost is to love your partner, as they love you. To respect your partner, as they respect you. To care for your partner, as they care for you.
You can only get out of a relationship what you put into it. If you ignore your partner, don’t expect them to be excited when you come home. If you snap at your partner, don’t expect them to be patient with you. If you aren’t willing to work at your relationship, how can you expect it to keep on running smoothly? We wouldn’t expect our cars to keep running smoothly without regular maintenance (although some people DO seem to expect that!)
Another place the TANSTAAFL concept seems to escape notice is in what we expect from our societies. We expect peace, but what do WE do to contribute to social peace? We want civility, not rudeness. But how thoughtful are we of the people around us. Do people who get off an escalator, and stop dead in their tracks to look around, expect civility from those behind them? Do drivers who speed up when someone is trying to enter their lane expect that they will be able to change lanes when they want?
You get out what you put in.
On an even broader level, we want crime-free societies. We’ve tried harsher laws, and more prisons, and that doesn’t seem to be achieving our goals. However, we know what conditions make crime more likely. So, why aren’t we demanding that officials take action on eliminating those conditions? The answer, of course, is money.
Fighting poverty, adequate housing, quality health care, good education, treating mental illness, all cost money. We don’t want to spend on money on those things. We want our money for ourselves, for our own uses. TANSATAAFL! You do not get safe streets and low crime-rates for nothing. You gets what you pays for.
When horrors like the Virginia Tech shootings occur, we are quick to vilify the gunman, to blame his rampage on “evil.” Yet, Cho Seung-Hui had been identified as mentally ill, and a danger to himself. By no stretch of the imagination did he receive adequate care. But, as a society, we are reluctant to take on responsibility for that. We don’t want the burden of identifying and treating people struggling with dangerous depressions or psychoses. But we don’t want them going on shooting rampages. And many people also don’t want gun sales or ammo sales restricted so that people in his condition won’t have access to them.
This sounds an awful lot like wanting to have your cake and eat it too. As if people were saying, “I want to be safe, but I don’t want to have to do the hard work to bring about real safety.” Well, sorry, but TANSTAAFL. We can continue to think of mental illness as an individual problem. But we will pay the price of that shortsightedness as communities.
When I was a young boy, John F. Kennedy was President of the U.S. I still remember the challenge he issued to his fellow citizens. “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” My values were shaped, in part, by those words.
And so, ask not what your relationship can do for you. Ask what you can do for your relationship. Ask not what your society can give to you. Ask what you can give to your society.
But what about the role of other people? Should we be expected to take all the responsibility ourselves? No, of course not. But our own behaviour is the only thing we can control, and that is where our own work must start. We can, at least, be secure in the knowledge that we have paid our share of the bill.
Author Robert Fulgham (Everything I Need to know I Learned in Kindergarten, and It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It) has written, “I am not interested in what you value, I want to know what you will do. I don’t care what kind of world you want. I care what kind of world you are willing to work for.”
So, the next time you feel like complaining about your relationship, or about society, I would recommend that you ask yourself, what kind of relationship are you willing to work for? What kind of society are you willing to work for? And what is the work you are doing to bring them about?