Christian right leader George Rekers takes vacation with "rent boy"

Why did Professor George Alan Rekers (an anti-gay activist who cofounded the right-wing Family Research Council with James Dobson, and runs the website Teen Sex Today) hire a young male escort from RentBoy.com to accompany him on a trip to Europe?

His answer: "I had surgery and I can't lift luggage. That's why I hired him."

Maybe his insurance company sent him to rentboy.com instead of a real medical assistant agency. It's Obama's fault!

201005041639For decades, George Alan Rekers has been a general in the culture wars, though his work has often been behind the scenes. In 1983, he and James Dobson, America's best-known homophobe, formed the Family Research Council, a D.C.-based, rabidly Christian, and vehemently anti-gay lobbying group that has become a standard-bearer of the nation's extreme right wing. Its annual Values Summit is considered a litmus test for Republican presidential hopefuls, and Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter have spoken there. (The Family Research Council would not comment about Rekers's Euro-trip.)

He has also influenced American government, serving in advisory roles with Congress, the White House, and the Department of Health and Human Services and testifying as a state's witness in favor of Florida's gay adoption ban. A former research fellow at Harvard University and a distinguished professor of neuropsychiatry at the University of South Carolina, Rekers has published papers and books by the hundreds, with titles like "Who Am I? Lord" and "Growing Up Straight: What Families Should Know About Homosexuality."

"While he keeps a low public profile, his fingerprints are on almost every anti-gay effort to demean and dehumanize LGBT people," says Wayne Besen, a gay rights advocate in New York City and the executive director of Truth Wins Out, which investigates the anti-gay movement. "His work is ubiquitously cited by lobby groups that work to deny equality to LGBT Americans. Rekers has caused a great deal of harm to gay and lesbian individuals."

Christian right leader George Rekers takes vacation with "rent boy"