The push against gay adoption and parenting: an unexpected silver lining.

Those of you who don’t listen to the Slate DoubleX Gabfest [Double X is part of Slate.com, DoubleX being the web magazine 'written for women about women'] perhaps should, and no more interesting edition than the most recent one where they mentioned in passing the sad case of George Alan Rekers.

Who he? Why a clinic psychologist who has made it his business to ‘convert’ homosexuals into heterosexuals. He has been a member of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality. A lovely crowd who believe in this conversion process and campaign for it. The small matter that he is an ordained Southern Baptist minister is probably neither here nor there.

What’s fascinating is that he is has testified in various cases as an ‘expert witness’, perhaps most notoriously in the 1998 case where the Boy Scouts of America defended a policy of excluding homosexuals and the Arkansas gay adoption case in 2004 where he defended that state’s policy of banning LGBT people from adopting. Interestingly the judge had harsh words against Rekers arguing that his case was based on his own personal ideology rather than evidence.

Problem is that Rekers has himself got caught up in a case where he travelled around Europe with a young man who was it appears available for hire from ‘Rentboy.com’. It’s actually all very sad, in the sense that as in many of these instances one comes away with a sense of a deep confliction and confusion as to the nature of individual sexuality.

But confusion and confliction [is that even a real word?] assail us all, straight or gay, one way or another on many matters. It’s where that confusion distorts into the sort of public policy activism that he’s been involved in that it becomes a problem.

Still, as was pointed out on the Gabfest, there is a heartening silver lining. Emily Bazelon noted that Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, referring to a case which Rekers had appeared on behalf of the state to support laws against gay adoption, had admitted that:

“Our attorneys handling this case have searched long and hard for other expert witnesses with comparable expertise to Dr. Rekers and have been unable to identify any who would be available for this case.”

For which, by the way, the good Dr. was paid a handsome $120,000 for his troubles (the Circuit Court Judge ruled against the state).

Bazelon noted the research doesn’t support the contention that gay couples make worse parents, and it’s now really hard to find any academic who can support that idea.

Or as Nadine Smith of the gay-rights organization Equality Florida said:

“Rekers is part of a small cadre of bogus pseudo scientists that charge these exorbitant fees to peddle information they know has been discredited time and time again. And people like McCollum will pay top dollar for it. There’s a reason why he can’t find credible sources. Because credible people don’t believe this ban should exist.“

BTW, did my eyes deceive me or was there a protest outside Leinster House yesterday lunchtime, as I passed by, against civil partnerships?