Fallout from the Rekers scandal

The sensational rentboy scandal exposing the hypocrisy of the anti-gay Dr. George Rekers has about played itself out as news, and its bookend twin story of the heterosexual affair of abstinence-only sex education champion and family values Congressman Mark Souter takes its place.

But there is a larger issue that is emerging in the Rekers fallout: What about his "expert testimony" that has been part of court cases, one of which (the Florida anti-gay adoption law) is still pending an appeal decision? Does the Attorney General now have an obligation to file an amendment to his appeal withdrawing Rekers' testimony?

It probably makes no difference, because the trial judge already discredited Rekers' testimony, saying it promoted Rekers' ideology rather than valid science. But it remains part of the record, just as Charles Socarides' affidavit remains forever part of the sealed documents in the Colorado Amendment 2 case that the Supreme Court overturned, saying that it could only have been motivated by "animus" toward homosexuals.

This is a serious issue that courts need to look at. When the state's prosecutors use $120,000 of taxpayer money to hire expert witnesses, there should be some standards for what makes an expert. When I testified as the plaintiff's expert witness in the case brought to overturn Louisiana's "crimes against nature" laws back in the late 90s, the State's only defense expert should not have been accepted on the stand as an expert, and in fact the plaintiff's attorney did challenge it.

Richard Cohen was the state's only "expert witness." Cohen portrays his work as an "international healing ministry" that has helped "hundreds and hundreds" of gay men "accept Jesus and give up their homosexual life style." It was established in court that Cohen has only a masters degree in counseling (something that is pretty easy to get) and was not licensed to practice in any state. (After you have the degree, to get licensed you actually have to do a lot of clinical work under supervision.) He refused to give his office address, because he practices out of his home and he feared retributive harassment.

There was nothing scientific about his testimony. He could only say, with dramatic gestures, that he had helped "hundreds and hundreds," but that he didn't have time to keep records or to do follow up studies to see if his healing ministry had long-term results. Instead, he simply insisted that, of those who "stuck with the program, 100% were healed." How neat. Those who quit the program are dropped from the statistics, allowing for the 100% success. It was a ludicrous performance, including a claque of groupies who applauded him when he finished. Even NARTH distanced itself from Cohen a few years ago, saying he was a little extreme in his claims.

Cohen got his come-uppance from Rachel Madow a few months back when she had him on her show to talk about his latest book. She is so smart (a former Rhodes Scholar at Oxford) and was well-prepared to skewer him with his own words. It was one of his associates who went to Uganda to speak at a conference about healing homosexuality, which was followed shortly by the law introduced into their parliament that would have included a death penalty for some homosexual acts and criminal charges against relatives and friends of gays who fail to report them. Cohen tried to distance himself from the law, but Rachel wouldn't let him off the hook of bearing some responsibility for promoting ideology disguised as 'science,' that lawmakers then use as rationalization for their draconian legislation (which at this point has reportedly been dealt a serious blow by the report of a study commission requested by the president, by the way.)

Should there be some standards that must be met to have the court accept testimony as expert? I suppose courts are set up to let the adversarial process -- challenge and counter-argument -- sort it out. Of course, that means that often it is the un-expert jurors or a single judge who ultimately "decides" which of competing "expert witnesses" to believe and thus to influence a decision. Does the court have some responsibility for determining what is expert testimony? Or is it "whatever the lawyers can get away with?"

I acknowledge that my wish to have the court discredit Cohen perhaps stems in part from my own feelings about Cohen's being paid rather well by taxpayer money for his theatrical performance, while I -- testifying for the other side with credentials that did qualify me as "expert" (Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University, author of articles on homosexuality in peer-reviewed journals) -- got paid nothing but my travel expenses by the not-well-funded private citizen plaintiffs.

Long rambling account -- bottom line: there are a lot of bogus "experts" out there peddling their ideology as "science," using scientific-sounding, bogus "studies" that fool the uninformed and scientifically naive jurors and the politically motivated, or ideologically-motivated legislators.

Ralph