The Loneliness of George Alan Rekers
If I were no so deep in dissertation mode right now, I would devote more attention to the George Rekers story because there is far more to it than the bloggers covering it have considered. First and foremost, the story reminds us of the pseudo-science behind much of the “scholarship” folks like Rekers use to address the causes and supposed “cures” of homosexuality.
It’s unfortunate that all too many of those who have written about it have been determined to focus on the tawdry aspects of the relationship. And unfortunate that gay bloggers have taken it upon themselves to track down the young escort, make public his profession and torment him with their questions. They should have left him out of this — or at the very least not made public his name.
The (very) young man is caught in the crossfire, so to speak, while Rekers acts out one of the oldest pathologies in the book, seeking solace with a younger companion to fill the emptiness in his own life.
The real story here is not just the contrast between Rekers’ public life and his private passions. It’s too easy (though, in this case, not entirely inaccurate) to call him “self-loathing” (as at least one person has done) or to dwell on his hypocrisy. The real story is what human beings do to address their loneliness, to feel connected with our fellows.
George Rekers is, by all evidence, a very lonely man.
As I have been reading about his European travels with a young escort, I am reminded of a passage describing such loneliness John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. While driving cross country, that Nobel-Prize winning author made a detour to Chicago to spend an evening with his wife. Arriving tired and unkempt at his hotel before she got to town, the management let him check into his room before it had been cleaned: it “had not been touched since its former occupant and left.”
And there, he found the remnants of this married guest’s (the author found letters to his wife in the wastebasket) tryst with a woman Steinbeck named Lucille:
I wonder what Harry an Lucille talked about. I wonder whether she made him less lonesome. Somehow I doubt it. I think both of them were doing what was expected of them. . . .
Three things haunted me about Lonesome Harry. First, I don’t think he had any fun; second, I think he was really lonesome, maybe in a chronic state and third, he didn’t do a single thing that couldn’t be predicted–didn’t break a glass or mirror, committed no outrages, left no physical evidence of joy. . . . I felt sad about Harry.
And in a way, I feel sad about George, or maybe I really feel sorry for him. He is clearly a very unhappy man. As with Steinbeck’s Harry, there is no evidence of joy in the tales of his European sojourn.
I do hope this situation causes Mr. Rekers to consider what he has said in the past about homosexuality. And that it reminds us all how powerful a force loneliness is. This man projected his loneliness outward in his condemnation of gay people — as others project theirs outward in their bile against other groups. He had not tended to his own inner needs.
Even if he does comes to terms with his own feelings for men, as I hope he does, he will not necessarily end his loneliness (just by coming out). There are sixty-year-old openly gay men who act very much as Mr. Rekers does, only without the dissociation of their deeper feelings from their personal identity and the projection of their own insecurities (and neuroses) onto others of a similar sexual/emotional make-up.
Perhaps, if Mr. Rekers understood the real meaning of marriage, he would understand why he is so lonely. He could start by reading the Odyssey.
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We can resolve the issues of “pseudoscience” provided PhDs, MDs and those that practice psychology and psychiatry are willing to submit to MRI polygraphs to address the fraud within the community geared to social activism specific to normalizing neurotic behavior and its associated paraphilias to children and the uneducated masses. It would be the first time the profession could be classified as a hard science as we would finally have replicable, empirical data, but that would destroy the gay movement, gay marriage, civil unions, and gay adoption.
Comment by RJLigier — May 7, 2010 @ 6:00 pm - May 7, 2010
Ponder shall we, the loeliness of the good dahkter, the money he received from AG McCollum in FL for his views on gay adoption, then ponder shall we the addition of pro-life lez ms. Bruce to th GOProud team, followed by Rubio pushing the anti-abortion bill in FL and then wonder who will joining Rubio @ the FL FRC din din.
Comment by rusty — May 7, 2010 @ 6:50 pm - May 7, 2010
Um, rusty, where’d you get that info about Tammy being pro-life? Last, I talked to her on the matter, she was pro-choice.
And what does politics have to do with my post? This time I kept politics out of it because there is a larger issue here.
Comment by B. Daniel Blatt — May 7, 2010 @ 6:53 pm - May 7, 2010
Sorry my mistake. Ms Tammy is pro-choice
Comment by rusty — May 7, 2010 @ 7:10 pm - May 7, 2010
I probably shouldn’t ask this, but what exactly do you think could be accomplished with these MRI polygraphs you speak of?
Comment by Throbert McGee — May 7, 2010 @ 7:14 pm - May 7, 2010
Now I am going from memory, always a dangerous thing, but I seem to recall the psychologist who fought to have homosexuality removed in the DSM IV later argued that some few (not all!) people can change their sexual orientation.
Again, I’ve no source to site on this, but maybe Rekers felt he was one of those few. Again, I feel sympathy for him in trying to deal with his sexuality. I move from sympathy to contempt if he’s buggering young boys.
Comment by The_Livewire — May 7, 2010 @ 7:45 pm - May 7, 2010
Live_wire, in some ways, you anticipate the post I have planned on the “pseudo-science.” It appears that there may be some people who can change their sexual orientation. Or perhaps those people who are bisexual to begin with, identified as gay and found the latter label no longer worked for them.
I don’t link the stories about Rekers because I don’t want to promote those who “outed” his escort. But, they indicate there was no “buggering” going on.
Comment by B. Daniel Blatt — May 7, 2010 @ 7:52 pm - May 7, 2010
I don’t have sympathy for someone who goes around and willing exploits and adds to a hostile environment against gay people. He found a way to gain money and influence by pushing propaganda to those who want to hear it, religious right wingers and theocratic Christians.
Yea some people can switch or they can deny it and live a life they find passable. I wouldn’t care if someone wanted to talk about changing their sexual orientation but it always seems like its because being gay is an awful thing. They use people like Rekers to make it okay to deny adoption rights to gays or even basic relationship protections.
No sympathy
Comment by darkeyedresolve — May 7, 2010 @ 9:23 pm - May 7, 2010
B Daniel, your post “feeling sorry” for this man who made his living persecuting gay people and making them feel “deviant” and “sick” for a sexual orientation that nobody would “choose” reeks of the liberal “feeling sorry for”, say, a terrorist who set off a bomb who was later psychoanalyzed and found to be “lonely”. In those cases, conservatives have a field day making fun of the often ridiculous liberal “advice” that “he just needing someone to love him, and it would have prevented all of this.” Now, you’re using the same absurd “logic” to say that ultimately, this man so full of hatred for a part of himself who took it out on others who lacked the money, connections, and power he has “just needs a hug because he was lonely”.
Sorry, but in this day an age, a gay man can come out–as you and GayPatriot have–even if he is conservative politically. He need not hide behind walls of self-denail, particulalry whien such “walls” directly affect the lives of other people.
Do you, or do you not agree with the conservative philosophy of taking responsibility for one’s own actions? His actions, over many years, were despicable and hypocritical, but now suddenly you “feel sorry for him” because “he was lonely”? The Columbine shooters said they were ‘lonely”, too, but I don’t think a hug was what most people wanted to give them.
Comment by Dan Latner — May 7, 2010 @ 10:24 pm - May 7, 2010
I know this Rekers guy is supposed to be some sort of Evangelical Christian bigshot, but, frankly, until the rentboy scandal, I had never heard of the motherfucker.
Comment by V the K — May 7, 2010 @ 10:41 pm - May 7, 2010
I know this Rekers guy is supposed to be some sort of Evangelical Christian bigshot, but, frankly, until the rentboy scandal, I had never heard of the dude.
Comment by V the K — May 7, 2010 @ 10:41 pm - May 7, 2010
Dan, you make some fair points. I feel sorry for him because his narrow view of Scripture has put him in this situation. But nowhere do I say that he is not responsible for his sorry situation.
Unlike the Columbine shooters, though he didn’t kill anybody. But, please note, nowhere in this post do I justify anything he did or said. I used the Steinbeck quote because that great writer thought Lonesome Harry was making some lousy choices. As was Mr. Rekers.
Comment by B. Daniel Blatt — May 7, 2010 @ 11:23 pm - May 7, 2010
So, if I understand Dan’s point of view, it’s somehow wrong to recognize and empathize with the pain of another human being if you disagree with him politically or philosophically?
Comment by V the K — May 8, 2010 @ 12:14 am - May 8, 2010
This post produced an interesting discussion. It began, however, on an odd note.
An interesting idea, RJLigier, I must admit. It would certainly produce some fascinating data. (Just the reaction of the medical community to such a proposal would be fascinating, I’m sure.)
However, RJ, you don’t follow up your interesting research idea with anything worthwhile:
This is entirely false. Psychological and psychiatric research has produced all sorts of replicable data over the years. Not as much as say, chemistry, perhaps, but then chemistry is easier.
Huh? How exactly?
Putting aside whatever you want to label “the gay movement,” the issues of SSM/civil unions and gay adoptions could be influenced by psychological and sociological research findings, but certainly not by findings on the truthfulness of opinions given by mental health professionals.
Comment by Classical Liberal Dave — May 8, 2010 @ 12:39 am - May 8, 2010
from the Dahkter’s website:
Professor George served as one of the multidisciplinary experts for the legal team that successfully defended the state of Florida’s law prohibiting adoption of children by homosexually-behaving individuals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case Lofton v. Secretary of the Department of Children and Family Services
Comment by rusty — May 8, 2010 @ 1:34 am - May 8, 2010
Rekker’s luggage lifter had several public postings as a sex worker. The lifter/baggage handler/sex worker was out to his family and friends and wasn’t aware that the dahkter was worse than the ‘crazy orange grove lady’ . and as a sex worker, being paid a fee as an adult (+18) can consent to any form of ‘buggering’ -as dan likes to comment ”whatever that means”
sorry dan if brining in some silly politics struck a nerve but let’s see. . .the Attorney General of Florida McCollum (who is running for the Governor seat as a Republican) used this lonely man to ban adoptions by gay folk. . .and sorry under this same system, Rubio is not only attending the FRC dinner in Florida for monies from the same people who supported this lonely man but also uses his ideas and resources to ‘move their agenda’ and then we have Rubio also supporting the anti-abortion bill that is now under consideration by Crist and yet you are touting the addition of a pro-choice advisor, the fabulous MS Bruce to GOProud.
You ask where is the compassion for such a twisted soul who is so lonely, that he has to ‘hire’ someone to carry his bags. Maybe this man is dealing with the emotional baggage his has personally packed himself over the years and is trying to find someway to redeem himself through a positive interaction with his young luggage handler.
But please keep in mind that some of this loneliness that affects many is actually forced upon us by people like the dahkter, like politicians currying favors from bigots and folk touting lofty values and tripping over there guilt and shame.
Comment by rusty — May 8, 2010 @ 1:57 am - May 8, 2010
rusty, where do I ask where is the compassion for such a twisted soul? I may feel sorry for him, but I’m not begging that other people feel the same way.
I see what you’re getting at in your last ¶, but quibble with the language. The loneliness isn’t forced on anybody, but believing the social conservative rhetoric causes some people to choose a path which leads to loneliness.
But so too does some of the rhetoric emanating from gay activists and followers of sexual liberationist ideologies posing as experts on the human heart.
It’s why I believe we need a serious conversation on the real meaning of marriage because if we understood that ancient and honorable institution and pursued its ideals, many of us, most of us perhaps, would be a lot less lonely.
Comment by B. Daniel Blatt — May 8, 2010 @ 2:03 am - May 8, 2010
you are right dan. . .The real story is what human beings do to address their loneliness, to feel connected with our fellows.
you’re right dan. . .people have the ability to address their own feelings of loneliness and sense of despair, except for the droves of folk who flow into spaces of organized religion and who listen to the drivel of bigoted folk seeking elected positions.
you’re right dan. . .we need to understand that we all have the right to feel connected with our fellows . . . be it in the military without DADT, be it in our communities in the sun and not in the shadows, and in our very own homes and families.
thanks and good night.
Comment by rusty — May 8, 2010 @ 2:13 am - May 8, 2010
I do not feel sorry for Mr. Rekers however I do not relish in his sudden ‘outing’ and the personal/professional ramifications involved. It is never a pleasant thing to watch. It usually fires up both sides as they use this story to attack one another…each side already scrambling for the PR fight.
Every one of these guys will be outed and as more and more of them are, I hope the pattern is noticed by the average American. Our most vicious opponents are members of our own community. Frankly, it makes most straight men just plain uncomfortable even talking about it let alone obsess on it your whole life.
Oh how we forget the lessons of Shakespear, “He doth protest too much methink.” lol!
That said, may it be a reminder to all of us that you WILL reap what you sew. Whatever bed you find yourself in is the one you made for yourself.
Comment by American Shepard — May 8, 2010 @ 2:34 am - May 8, 2010
But if you affix a “D” after your name, the idiot gay left will bite on a pillow for you. Even more so if your only accomplishment in life is meaningless, flowery speeches of superfluous flummery.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — May 8, 2010 @ 1:23 pm - May 8, 2010
flowery speeches of superfluous flummery
http://www.flfamily.org/uploadfile/2010upload/FFP-1002_Mailer_final.pdf
Comment by rusty — May 8, 2010 @ 2:11 pm - May 8, 2010
If I think of just George Rekers the man I do feel sorry for him. All of us have made poor choices in our lives. Then I remember what he has done which has caused great harm to others and the feeling goes away immediately, replaced with a burning anger. George Rekers is an imperfect child of God just like I am and all of us here are. So perhaps that’s food for thought in that in one sense I am no better than he is because in a perverse twist on the Golden Rule I have no problem returning in kind what he has delivered to me and others like myself.
Comment by John — May 8, 2010 @ 7:21 pm - May 8, 2010
#21 I’m sorry, wtf is your point?
Comment by ThatGayConservative — May 9, 2010 @ 1:50 am - May 9, 2010
@Dan For some reason I’ve always liked the sound of ‘bugger’
(the word, mind you I’ve never listented to the act)
@John Would you forgive him if he asked forgiveness for the pain he caused others? It is one of my greatest failings that I can’t forgive my ex-wife, so it’s not a sarcastic question from me.
@American Shepherd That may well be true, though I don’t think it motivates all. Some folks really can’t handle change well, and they fight it with every trick in the book. But most all of us do have that line we draw saying ‘Here, but no farther.’ In Reker’s case, I think he drew that line not to fight for, but to hide behind. (Not that I know his motivations. Like I said above, he may honestly have believed that he could change his sexuality)
Comment by The_Livewire — May 10, 2010 @ 7:21 am - May 10, 2010
There is two sides of the story, as Dan suggests. Yes, George Rekers is entirely responsible for his actions. He learned through a lifetime, that homosexuality cannot be changed simply by wanting it to change. And that homosexuality is not the black and white evil that he has spent his life making it to be. Despite whatever kind of horrendous background he came from, he should have seen the light well before now.
On the other hand, it’s unfortunate that whatever lead him to his behaviors happened to begin with. There’s good reason to do the best for our children, even though we are all responsible for our actions when we are adults.
I think most of us grew up, to one degree or another, with some kind of oppression simply for being gay. Whether it is parents who couldn’t stand the fact that they were gay (and still do so today, now matter how upstanding their gay children are), or oppression from peers, school, their church, etc. It’s not easy to, all of a sudden, at 18, just turn off all the crap that one grew up with. So many of the responses fall into two opposite extremes. On the one hand, you have people who excuse everything about being gay, including the bad stuff, like promiscuity and drugs, and use being gay as an excuse, and try to undermine all those who don’t have their narrow point of view. And on the other, you have people, not just self-loathers like Rekers, who even if they accept being gay, see everything else about being gay as bad, to the point of only seeing the bad, while kissing up and excusing anti-gay persons, or anything that undermines anything about other gay people who don’t share their narrow view.
Again, we are all responsible for our actions, and most of us do grow out of either of these extremes. But it would have been much better if we didn’t grow up with the baggage that most others didn’t have. And that’s another sad part about George Rekers. How would have he behaved as an adult if he didn’t grow up with the baggage that he had? Perhaps he wouldn’t have ended up being the pathetic shell that he is, and maybe would have had a real productive life. We’ll never know for sure.
Comment by Pat — May 10, 2010 @ 9:52 am - May 10, 2010
I have some sympathy for the escort. He certainly didn’t sign up for a media circus by taking a $75 a day traveling gig. But Rekers was risking being exposed every time he hired an escort (another one has already come forth with a similar story). Isn’t it interesting how many of these anti-gay crusaders are gay themselves? Interesting but not surprising.
As to #1, no, there is actually no evidence that homosexuality is the result of a form of neuroses and there were double-blind studies in the 70s that proved this. There was no difference between the responses to Rorschach tests by homosexual and heterosexual people. Only the anti-gay social conservatives still stand by these old theories of homosexuality. Everyone else realizes there’s no truth to them.
Comment by Houndentenor — May 10, 2010 @ 6:40 pm - May 10, 2010
Houndentenor,
Funny that. I saw a special on John Barrowman (Who seems to be a great guy in a committed relationship, so more power to him) where they did an MRI test and found that his brain was definately wired differently than his brother’s. So there appears to be some truth to these ‘old theories’. I believe it was called ‘Becoming John Barrowman’ but I’ve only seen the American edit.
(disclaimer: I’m left handed, so I know my brain is wired differently)
Comment by The_Livewire — May 11, 2010 @ 7:12 am - May 11, 2010