Money Well Spent

The tragicomic saga of Dr. George Rekers - the antigay crusader who co-founded the Family Research Council with James Dobson - is only just unfolding, and it makes for great reading. To bring you up to speed: Rekers recently took a ten-day European vacation and brought along a lithe young twenty-year-old he had met on the website rentboy.com. That by itself earns Rekers a place of honor alongside the inimitable Larry Craig and Ted Haggart as antigay hypocrites par excellence. Pass the popcorn, please.

Unfortunately, Rekers' sordid little comedy didn't just play out in the corner: the people of Florida had to pay for his nonsense. (Floridians, please note: I provide assorted nonsense at a much better rate. Return my calls!)

It seems that the attorney general of Florida recently paid Rekers at least $60,900 to provide expert testimony in a case challenging Florida's outrageous ban on adoption by gays. According to NBC's Miami affiliate, Rekers intended to testify that "gays make inferior and even dangerous parents and that adopted kids living in gay households, even after 10 years, would be better off removed from the home and placed with straight parents." Ech, suddenly the "comic" part of "tragicomic" doesn't seem quite so applicable. Fortunately, the judge concluded that Rekers' testimony was neither "credible nor worthy of forming the basis of public policy."

NBC story here, with some interesting quotes from Rekers.