In a Recent Column South Florida Notable and Nationally Syndicated, Award-Winning Columnist Leonard Pitts Junior Addressed the Atrocity and Hypocrisy of the George Alan Rekers Story - The Psychologist and Baptist Minister Who Claimed He Could Cure Homosexuality.
"Put yourself in the shoes of the teenager" he wrote, "Bewildered and Frightened by these feelings he or she is not 'supposed' to have, feelings of sexual attraction to people of the same gender. You try to deny them, try to ignore them, try to suppress them, but they will not go away. You are all alone, isolated behind a secret that presses down on you like weights, a fear of rejection that haunts you like ghosts.
And here comes Dr. Rekers telling you you are abnormal, telling you you are bad, telling you he can cure you, as if you had a disease like measles or the flu.
Then, in his off hours, after he's done curing you, he's trolling RentBoy.Com looking for young men to handle his, ahem . . . baggage.
That's more than hypocrisy, more even than self-loathing. It is a betrayal of one's own, a sellout of the most vulnerable.
And what's sad is not just that a George Rekers would do this, but that ours is a culture that would encourage and reward such duplicity in the first place.
He purported to heal homosexuals? One is reminded of an injunction: 'Physician, heal thyself.'
Rekers would be wise to heed that advice.
Homosexual urges are the least of his afflictions."
Sometimes Mister Pitts, Your Writing, Your Insight and Your Sensitivity - Just Blow Me Away!
Is it Any Wonder They Gave You a Pulitzer Prize in 2004.
Agnostic Thinking...
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Very well said! Mr. Pitts, one of the final vestiges of the days when the Miami Herald was a truly great paper.
ReplyDeleteNow, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and please understand that this is purely speculation, but, do you think it's possible that this incident happened as the result of a simple crisis of faith?
Isn't it just possible that Dr. Rekers may have been dabbling in Catholicism on the side and come upon that crucifix with the big old stiffy and had him a lapse of judgement? All kinds of things can happen with you go worshipping two Gods, old Satan is always just waiting for the opportunity to sneak into the soul of a backslidden Baptist.
I know that Crucifix made me wanna genuflect and I'm a Buddhist.