Before He Hired an Escort, Rekers Tried to Spank the Gay Away

What amazes me is that quacks like this have been allowed to continue to practice. Granted, 30 years ago, APA standards were very different, but the sort of harm and hurt this guy has done should not go unpunished. I hope that the boy described in the story, who attempted suicide, eventually got appropriate therapy and was able to come to terms with the appalling treatment he received from his parents and from Rekers.

One of the commenters to the article makes an important point: Pavlov and Skinner never argued that their animals actually had a conscience or free will, and so it's not really sensible, even from a behaviorist perspective, to assume that any sort of behavioral conditioning would actually work to reduce or eliminate homosexual behavior.

Reading artlcles like that really makes me angry, though.

 

But blenders can be really hot!

(Actually, i have to give you props for that, one of the most vivid comparisions I've heard in a while.)

There's definitely evidence that sexual orientation attributes appear at a very early age, so the 4 year old thinking about rainbows might indeed turn out to be gay... but it certainly isn't sexualized at that point.

And the really gaping hole in Rekers' logic is the logical jump that assumes that all gay men as children engaged in activities generally considered to be feminine (Easy Bake ovens, Barbies, etc). While there is a correlation, he's looking at an artifact or byproduct rather than a causal pattern. But most of those guys are dumbasses to begin with (even the ones with Ph.Ds) and so I wouldn't necessarily expect them to get that difference.

 

You have to remember that 30 years ago, parents often deferred more easily than they do now to "professionals" who knew more. And then there's the experiments that Stanley Milgram did where he showed that people will do ridiculous things that are obviously harmful to others if they have the perception that someone more knowledgeable is telling them it's the right thing to do. So while I think the parents were dumb to go along with it, I can sort of understand why they might have done so.