Update: Escort tells paper Rekers is homosexual

The newspaper that busted a Christian leader with a male escort ran a follow-up story Thursday afternoon:

The male escort hired by anti-gay activist George Alan Rekers has told Miami New Times the Baptist minister is a homosexual who paid him to provide body rubs once a day in the nude, during their ten-day vacation in Europe. Rekers allegedly named his favorite maneuver the “long stroke” — a complicated caress “across his penis, thigh… and his anus over the butt cheeks,” as the escort puts it. “Rekers liked to be rubbed down there,” he says. …. Lucien decided to speak out after a heart-to-heart with a friend, Michael, who alerted him to the grim realities of his client’s anti-gay activities. Lucien, who had originally declined to speak about the trip, now says he can do little good by protecting his erstwhile, fundamentalist client. In the past 24 hours, Rekers, a board member at the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) and cofounder of the Family Research Council, has claimed he took Lucien to Europe to inspire him to accept Jesus into his heart and renounce his homosexuality. Lucien now offers Rekers a counterproposal: “In all honesty, he should disassociate himself from these [anti-gay] groups.”

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The New Times “spent more than three hours with Lucien in the wee hours of Thursday morning and promises future updates throughout the afternoon to a story which “has grabbed worldwide headlines and been the subject of monologues by Steven Colbert and Jay Leno.”

Also: Watch Stephen Colbert mock anti-gay callboy hirer: ‘He needed someone to hoist his sack’

A Christian leader and prominent neuro-psychiatrist who co-founded the Family Research Council with evangelist James Dobson took a ten-day European vacation with a callboy he met through RentBoy.com and was caught in an airport with the escort by a Miami newspaper.

The escort said he had met George Rekers, professor of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Science at the University of South Carolina, on RentBoy.com. Rekers, when confronted, didn’t deny that he’d met the callboy online, but said he had hired him to help him carry his baggage and didn’t learn he was generally hired for “private company” until mid-way through his European vacation.

“I had surgery,” Rekers told Miami’s New Times, “and I can’t lift luggage. That’s why I hired him.” (The paper noted that it didn’t stop him from pushing a “tottering” pile of luggage through Miami International Airport.)

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The callboy, identified by a pseudonym, told the New Times‘ Penn Bullock and Brandon Thorp that Rekers claim that he didn’t know his “line of work” seemed spurious.

“He should’ve been able to tell you that,” he said. “But that’s up to him.”

According to Penn and Thorp, the slender, 20-year-old escort’s profile advertises his “smooth, sweet, tight ass” and “perfectly built 8 inch cock.” RentBoy.com’s profiles are not indexed by Google.

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Ã¢â‚¬Å“It is clear that Rekers has baggage and certainly needs help,Ã¢â‚¬Â said Wayne Besen, a prominent opponent of the “ex-gay” movement and director of the nonprofit Truth Wins Out. Referring to South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, a conservative who claimed he was hiking when he’d actually been meeting with a mistress, he added: Ã¢â‚¬Å“At least he did not say he was walking the Appalachian Trail.Ã¢â‚¬Â

“This is a bombshell that completely discredits the ex-gay industry and proves that the movement is a fraud,Ã¢â‚¬Â Besen added.

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The paper printed emails exchanged between the professor and the escort prior to their trip. Rekers co-founded the conservative and anti-gay Family Research Council with Rev. James Dobson in 1983.

“I’d like to propose another trip to Rome, Italy, for a week or more,” Rekers purportedly wrote in an Mar. 21 email obtained by New Times. “This is so exciting to have a nice Travel Assistant and traveling companion! Wow! I’m so glad I met you.”

“I called and talked to the reservation guy in London and reserved a room with two twin beds,” Rekers allegedly remarked in a later email.

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Rekers is a prominent advocate against gays in Florida, where he resides. He testified against Florida allowing gay couples to adopt, asserting that children of gay couples “living with a practicing homosexual in the adoptive home,Ã¢â‚¬Â are especially Ã¢â‚¬Å“vulnerable to psychological damage and an increasing inability to adapt.”

A commenter on a California Catholic daily, which reported the findings of Rekers’ investigations into gay adoption, remarked, “The active principle in these children’s stress is the fact that their welfare comes in dead last in the homosexual lifestyle – it is oriented toward grooming them for traumatic early sexualization and exploitation by adults.”

The escort told New Times that Rekers is “primarily a family man,” despite their European jaunt.

“You don’t understand how much this guy honestly cares about taking care of kids,” he was quoted as saying.

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Reker is the author of “Growing Up Straight: What Families should Know about Homosexuality.”