Dr. George Rekers, who infamously hired a male prostitute to help him “lift his luggage,” was originally one of the founders of the Family Research Council. But he got his start in the 70′s as a doctoral student at UCLA working on an experimental therapy to alter “feminine behavior” in boys. According to CNN, one of his first patients/experiments was Kirk Murphy:
Rekers, who conducted the therapy on Kirk, went on to build a career of influence based on the premise from his research that homosexuality can be prevented.
He became a founding member of the Family Research Council, a faith-based organization that lobbies against gay-rights issues. Rekers was also on the board of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, an organization of scientists that says its mission is to offer treatment to those who struggle with what they call “unwanted homosexuality.”
In 2003, Kirk committed suicide.
Anderson Cooper has the story:
The fact that Kirk Murphy was openly gay totally invalidates all of Reker’s published work (as if it needed to be invalidated), and the fact that it fucked him up so badly that it left him suicidal (which is inarguable since his first attempt at eighteen, documented by a psychiatrist) should be enough to see Reker permanently barred from ever conducting experiments in “human psychology” (read: “torture”) ever again.
On a final note: I feel sad for Reker, who is so afraid of what he is that he projects himself onto others and tortures them to try to eliminate those traits which he knows are within himself. If only he hadn’t grown up in a Christian environment, he could be living an honest, happy life and using his mind and skills for something productive and good.
This.
If only he hadn’t grown up in a [put the name of any religion that condemns homosexuality] environment…
This is not just a Christian (TM) problem. In other religions and/or places you might get slain for being a homosexual human being, but mostly out of religious reasoning…
And up to now I haven’t heard about such therapies being offered in other places than the USA. Does anyone know more?
They do them in the UK too at the extreme end of the Christian spectrum. Sadly, Muslim men who are gay still get murdered by states and by families all over the world, including in Western nations (gay women get subjugated and raped instead).
It is tragic, but ultimately it is only a case study. This is a sample size of one. It is sufficient only to raise alarm bells and prompt a reexamination of other surviving study subjects.
George Reker really sets off my gaydar. I’m not surprised that he was caught with a male escort. Talk about going down in flames…
I said the exact same thing. I’m wary of phrases like “very obviously gay”, because people, being wonderfully various, always have the capacity to be unexpected – However in Reker’s case: Let’s face it, he’s gay.
he’s just another repressed that do not accept himself
I just automatically assume that anyone that is THAT against homosexuality is gay themselves.
The gayest person alive – Fred Phelps.
I’ve always thought there were two groups of people who promote homosexuality as the worst ever sin: those who aren’t tempted by it in the same way that they are by greed or lust or anger, and so get to feel superior by not indulging in the worst sin; and those who are tempted by it, and assume everyone else is as well.
I am more than happy to cede Fred Phelps to the heterosexual community. The rest of us don’t want him.
I don’t think anyone wants him.
Awww poor Fred, always picked last for any teams.
Gawd wuvs him, though.
I’m pretty sure Fred Phelp’s god only knows how to hate.
Why do you think Fred Phelps has lived so long, both Satan and Jesus do not want anything to do with him.
Huh. And here I am thinking, “He’s got to be a lich…”
Kirk’s parents are equally to blame. Idiots.
I watched only the first part of this report (and it irritates me that CNN broke it up into multiple segments, with all the depth of a wading pool,) but I took an immediate dislike to Kirk’s mom. The nicest way I can describe her is stubborn hick. It’s possible Kirk was in for a miserable life, even without “therapy.”
She was rather keen to abdicate all of her parental responsibility to the father and “the scientists”, conveniently ignoring that she was both the torturer and the implement of torture in the “experiments”. I guess some truths are just too horrifying to face.
Sorry for the language, but when will these self-righteous, hypocritical bastards figure out that it doesn’t matter whom we love, only that we love?!?
nenevr, because they’re self-righteous hypocritical bastards
Thankfully, this study would never pass a research ethics board today. Sadly, ethics boards and standards exist because so many horrendous human experiments like this one were carried out and published in the name of science. Even more tragic, this doctor paraded around his “finding” in both the name of science and religion, and far beyond the time his original experiment would be allowed by any educational institution.
Add this doc’s name to the list of shame shared by Wendell Johnson’s “Monster Study”, Philip Zimbardo’s “Stanford Prison Experiment”, John Watson’s “Little Albert”, Milgram’s shock experiment, Tuskegee, and so many more.
I do not feel sorry for Rekers. He is evil. He misused his trusted position. He is the reason many people don’t trust scientists, physicians, and psychologists.
There is nothing shameful about the Stanford prison experiment or the Milgram shock experiment. They relied entirely on volunteers and taught us some very important things about psychology. Just because the results tell you some things that you’d personally rather not know about how humans think, doesn’t mean the studies were unethical.
I will agree than the Tuskeegee syphilis study was highly unethical.
It’s not the results that makes them unethical. On the contrary, the results are downright fascinating. Psychology was one of my undergrad degrees, and those were two of my favorite studies. They are well-known examples that can be dissected from various angles and were brought out for several courses (intro psych, research methods, cognitive, social, physiological, behavior disorders, etc) . The videos and interviews from years later are also very interesting.
Research ethics as law is a fairly new idea. The Belmont Report. The laws we have today to protect human research subject come from this report in the mid-70s. The APA, WHO, and other countries have standards set up too. Before that, it was up to scientists and individual institutions to police themselves. I picked the Belmont link because it’s nice and concise.
Milgram’s shock experiment and the Standford prison experiment break many of the guidlines. In their defense they were performed prior to the Belmont report. Not so much in their defense, some moral stuff should be obvious and you shouldn’t have to wait around for a committee and a law to tell you it’s wrong to allow a study which is causing harm to continue.
They break the repect for persons rule because even though the participants are voluntary, they are not told what the experiment is for from the start. They break the beneficence rule, because they do plenty of psychologic harm. And in case they didn’t know ahead of time it would be harmful, researchers had plenty of time to witness this in the course of the experiment and didn’t stop it.
They break just about every rule in the informed consent section. “the research procedure, their purposes, risks and anticipated benefits, alternative procedures (where therapy is involved), and a statement offering the subject the opportunity to ask questions and to withdraw at any time from the research…informed consent requires conditions free of coercion and undue influence…Unjustifiable pressures usually occur when persons in positions of authority or commanding influence urge a course of action for a subject”
In the Milgram experiment, subjects pleaded to be allowed to stop and they were informed that the authority in the study required they continue. Interviews years later showed many subjects to still be quite traumatized.
In the Stanford prison study (which did receive the ethical go-ahead of the university at the time), Dr. Zimbardo broke the boundary rule by actually participating as the superintendent of the “jail” himself. Though he claimed to have given those in guard roles no instructions, his actual briefing basically told them to oppress prisoners. The study took 5 days before he ended it, but enough transpired before that point that it should’ve been stopped sooner.
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HO. LY. shizzzz, I wasn’t familiar with any of those studies. I knew stuff like this had occurred but DAMN that’s some really bad stuff.
That’s one way to cure the gay…I guess. :-(
making them commit suicide? I think that’s also a way to “cure” heterosexual
It pretty much cures anything.
It may eliminate the host, but doesn’t cure anything.
This is horrible. It’s sad to think that there are still people out there who are suffering from the horrendous effects of awful research like this.