Orlando Sentinel Column Slams Florida AG for Use of Rekers

The fall out from the exposure of George Rekers as a fraud and closet case continues to mount and with luck will have a chilling effect on the use of other Christian Right water carriers motivated by religious extremism as "expert" witnesses in future trials seeking to limit LGBT rights. An op-ed column in the Orlando Sentinel takes Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum (at left) to serious task for having used Rekers as his "expert" witness in the litigation where the State of Florida sought to bar gays from adopting children. The column also brings out what should have been an obvious fact to McCollum: Duh . . if it's near impossible to secure an expert witness that supports your factual/scientific argument, then maybe that ought to tell you something from the get go. As McCollum has hopefully learned, putting religious dogma ahead of true facts is a good way to end up looking like an ass (not that seems to deter Virginia AG Ken Kookinelli). Here are some column highlights:
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In 2008, I wrote about the state's legal battle to block foster parent Frank Martin Gill, a gay man, from adopting two abused children he rescued from a crack house. Florida lawmakers banned gay adoptions in 1977 during the state's Anita Bryant phase.
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The Attorney General's Office hired Dr. George Rekers, a Miami psychologist and co-founder of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group, to defend the ban. Rekers considers gays immoral deviants, doomed to an early death and thereafter to eternal damnation.

So it understandably caused a stir when the Miami New Times busted Dr. Rekers for going on a 10-day European vacation with Lucien, a 20-year-old male prostitute who advertised on rentboy.com. Don't you just hate it when Stephen Colbert names your expert witness the "Alpha Dog of the Week"?
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If you think Rekers is a laughingstock, imagine how the Attorney General's Office feels. It represented the Department of Children and Families, charged with enforcing a gay adoption ban that DCF Secretary George Sheldon opposed when he was in the Legislature. The Attorney General's Office paid Rekers $60,900 for his expertise.
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Attorney General Bill McCollum said last week that his agency did a "thorough search" to find him. He said Rekers had a Ph.D. from UCLA and experience testifying in similar cases. Rekers did testify in Arizona in opposition to gay foster parents. But the judge there called his testimony "extremely suspect and of little, if any, assistance to the court."
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So much for a thorough search. McCollum then admitted the obvious about hiring Rekers: "There wasn't a whole lot of choice."
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Rekers was so embarrassing, even back in 2008, that McCollum's office blamed DCF for finding him. That infuriated a DCF official, who said the Attorney General's Office found him, which McCollum now confirms. The Florida judge didn't find Rekers any more credible than the Arizona judge and tossed out the state's gay adoption ban. The Attorney General's Office is appealing.
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Meanwhile, McCollum is flagging in his bid to be the GOP standard bearing for Governor. Based on his judgment on Rekers, I do not blame Floridians in questioning McCollum's competence.