The gay prostitution scandal surrounding George Rekers — a prominent Christian proponent of gay-to-straight "conversion therapy" — keeps growing: His European vacation "rent boy" Jo-Vanni Roman (aka "Lucien") told CNN that Reker had paid him for daily nude "sexual" massages, and a second purported Rekers-hired male escort has come forward. Given Rekers' vigorous anti-gay activism, he's emerging as "the latest in a long line of disgraced culture warriors," says Michelle Goldberg in The Daily Beast: Ted Haggard; Larry Craig; now Rekers. When will the Christian right acknowledge this pattern? An excerpt:
"In 1996, three researchers from the University of Georgia published a study in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology about the links between homophobia and homosexual arousal. The authors, Henry E. Adams, Lester W. Wright, Jr., and Bethany A. Lohr, started with 35 straight men identified as homophobic and 29 straight men that were not. Both groups were shown heterosexual, lesbian, and gay male porn while their erectile responses were measured. 'Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli,' reported the researchers.
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