{"id":2197,"date":"2010-05-14T17:40:33","date_gmt":"2010-05-14T17:40:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2010\/05\/conservative-christian-leader.php"},"modified":"2010-05-14T17:40:33","modified_gmt":"2010-05-14T17:40:33","slug":"conservative-christian-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/05\/conservative-christian-leader","title":{"rendered":"Conservative Christian Leader Fights Sex Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) A former Family Research Council board member has resigned from an organization that helps people deal with unwanted same-sex attractions, after reports that he hired a gay escort.<br \/>\nWhile planning a trip through Europe last month (April), George Rekers hired a gay prostitute who advertises on the website Rentboy.com, according to a report in the Miami New Times. The escort, Jo-vanni Roman, 20, told the New Times he was paid to give Rekers nude massages.<br \/>\nRekers has written books on child sexual identity and had been a prominent member of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH).<br \/>\nRekers announced his resignation from NARTH on May 11,&#8221;to allow myself the time necessary to fight the false media reports that have been made against me.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;With the assistance of a defamation attorney, I will fight these false reports because I have not engaged in any homosexual behavior whatsoever. I am not gay and never have been.&#8221;<br \/>\nFamily Research Council President Tony Perkins wrote in a newsletter that Rekers was on the original board of his conservative Christian organization but had not been connected with it for more than a decade.<br \/>\nPerkins wrote on May 5, after the reports emerged, that while, &#8220;it&#8217;s extremely disappointing when any Christian leader engages in the very activities that they `preach&#8217; against, it&#8217;s not surprising.&#8221;<br \/>\nRekers, who is not granting interviews, told the Miami newspaper that his traveling companion helped him with luggage he could not lift after having surgery.<br \/>\n<em>&#8212; Adelle M. Banks<br \/>\nCopyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) A former Family Research Council board member has resigned from an organization that helps people deal with unwanted same-sex attractions, after reports that he hired a gay escort. While planning a trip through Europe last month (April), George Rekers hired a gay prostitute who advertises on the website Rentboy.com, according to a report in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Conservative Christian Leader Fights Sex Scandal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/05\/conservative-christian-leader\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Conservative Christian Leader Fights Sex Scandal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"(RNS) A former Family Research Council board member has resigned from an organization that helps people deal with unwanted same-sex attractions, after reports that he hired a gay escort. 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