Post about "Lucien"

Professional anti-gay psychologist George Alan Rekers was photographed at Miami International Airport with a 20-year-old boy by New Times Contributor Brandon K. Thorp. Result: yet another fall from grace by a paid propagandist for right wing causes. This time, the fallen is the expert witness used to derail gay adoption.

Rekers was a co-founder of the Family Research Council, though it has developed a sudden case of selective amnesia. The New Times story reported that the 20-year-old was an escort whom Rekers hired off the sexworker/bodyworker site rentboy.com. It appears the reporters were able to do so, because the escort, whom they called “Lucien” confirmed it in exchange for not being identified in the story.

But while the right wing organizations that used to tout Dr. Rekers on their websites have been busy scrubbing their sites*of any mention of his name, another story has been developing: several gay news sites have been seeking the identity of “Lucien,” and it appears they’ve been successful.

There’s been a pretty hearty debate on blogs and in the comments on stories about “Lucien” (whom the Advocate identifies as Jo-vanni Roman) over whether he has any expectation of privacy and whether specifics about him should or should not be revealed.

But there’s another question here: does “Lucien” have a professional responsibility, one like journalists or priests or doctors, to protect the specific details of his relationship with his john? This is not about Rekers: he’s a hypocrite of the worst order, its all about the rentboy. We saw this question raised with Mike Jones, who outed Ted Haggard, and its probably the next question in the very public deconstruction of the Rekers/Lucien relationship.

What he’s done so far doesn’t really breach any confidentiality. He confirmed who he was and why he was there and he hasn’t yet taken the bait to give blow-by-blow descriptions, with a not-too-artful hint that he might have done so if it could somehow have been off-the-record. Though Reker deserves to be called out for his lame attempts at denial, the world’s oldest profession deserves something too. It deserves professionals as practitioners.

UPDATE: Jo-vanni Roman takes Unzipped’s bait.

UPDATE II: Roman takes the bait with the hook, and goes all the way with New Times.

UPDATE III: University of South Carolina Medical School joins the “scrub away the gay” party and removes Dr. Rekers. Box Turtle Bulletin has the legacy screencapture.

* Ex-Gay Watch reports the changes to the Family Research Council were made before the Rekers trip, possibly as far back as 2007.