The Preacher and the Rent-boy

[BKThorp]

Sorry. You're right -- it is indeed "high school drek," especially in the "How The Miami New Times [...]" story.

Penn and I are pretty mortified over the stories' final forms. This is what happens when you take a "literary" story, or a series of them, and shove them through two editors, one fact checker, one copy editor, a legal team, and then back through the editors and copy-editor before publication. New Times kinew the Rekers story would be big: They weren't going to take any chances.

If Penn and I were smarter, or more experienced, we would have written all of these pieces in a hard-news style, because that kind of writing is immune to molestation by editors. And we did do that with some of them. "There Were Others, Rentboy Says" was newsy; so was "Before He Hired Escort, Rekers Tried To Spank The Gay Away." But most of the others... egads.

So: Please don't judge us too harshly. To see how we really write, please read our periodic Swift pieces. (Including, if you care to, our piece on this very subject from two weeks ago.)

To cwalner: Holy poop. That's awful. I've had a similar experience. If we bump into each other at TAM, let's trade sob stories over a beer.

To everyone else -- thanks for reading, and Happy Monday.

- BKT

 

[headscratcher4]

BKT: nice job...you even got Frank Rich talking about your story in the Sunday NYTimes!

 

[Puppycow]

Dr. Rekers' 'Feminine Boy Project'

In 1974, Rekers, a leading thinker in the so-called ex-gay movement, was presented with a 4-year-old “effeminate boy” named Kraig, whose parents had enrolled him in the program. Rekers put Kraig in a “play-observation room” with his mother, who was equipped with a listening device. When the boy played with girly toys, the doctors instructed her to avert her eyes from the child.

According to a 2001 account in Brain, Child Magazine, “On one such occasion, his distress was such that he began to scream, but his mother just looked away. His anxiety increased, and he did whatever he could to get her to respond to him… Kraig became so hysterical, and his mother so uncomfortable, that one of the clinicians had to enter and take Kraig, screaming, from the room.”

Rekers’s research team continued the experiment in the family’s home. Kraig received red chips for feminine behavior and blue chips for masculine behavior. The blue chips could be cashed in for candy or television time. The red chips earned him a “swat” or spanking from his father. Researchers periodically entered the family’s home to ensure proper implementation of the reward-punishment system.

After two years, the boy supposedly manned up. Over the decades, Rekers, who ran countless similar experiments, held Kraig up as “the poster boy for behavioral treatment of boyhood effeminacy.”

At age 18, shamed by his childhood diagnosis and treatment, Rekers’s poster boy attempted suicide…

I hope the bad old days of trying to cure homosexuality will soon be a thing of the past. This is ridiculous.

 

[pgwenthold]

Dr. Rekers' 'Feminine Boy Project'

At age 18, shamed by his childhood diagnosis and treatment, Rekers’s poster boy attempted suicide…

sigh...

 

[Sledge]

What the **** is "feminine behaviour" at four years old? That "program" is just evil.

 

[Blue Mountain]

What the **** is "feminine behaviour" at four years old? That "program" is just evil.

Probably best defined as "non-stereotypical male behaviour"—probably characterised as a fascination for cars, guns, and rough-and-tumble play.

I'd like to know if the boy in the study turned out to be straight, gay, or somewhere in between. I do know the sad outcome of a study where there was an attempt to change a genetically male boy into a female through environmental conditioning: David Reimer^WP.

 

[ponderingturtle]

What the **** is "feminine behaviour" at four years old? That "program" is just evil.

Non stereotypical gender play. So playing with dolls instead of cars, that kind of thing.

 

[headscratcher4]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/us/19rekers.html?ref=us

Interesting pick-up story in the NYTimes this morning. Suggesting that states/attorney's who relied on Rekers' testimony for their anti-gay measures may have a legal/ethical obligation to go back to the courts and formally withdraw the so-called "expert" testimony.

 

[Arcade22]

Wow, who could guess that an idiot Christian and homophobe is gay? What a shocker!

 

[Hadron]

What is sad is that there will be people who will continue to defend Rekers's innocence until the day they die. I'm not saying that he IS gay, but I honestly don't think you can find a counter-argument with much supporting evidence. Correct me if I am wrong.

 

[Roadtoad]

Dr. Rekers' 'Feminine Boy Project'



I hope the bad old days of trying to cure homosexuality will soon be a thing of the past. This is ridiculous.

Sounds to me like Rekers took his cue from the South Africans. And in neither case was anyone "cured" of anything. (Not that there was anything to "cure"...)