Anti-Gay Gay Preacher’s ‘Therapy’ Drove Man to Suicide

Religiously motivated anti-gay child abuse
US News • Views: 30,900

You may recall our story from last year about fundamentalist Christian leader George Rekers, who founded the politically active and virulently anti-gay Family Research Council with Dr. James Dobson — and then was caught on vacation with a “rent boy.”

It wasn’t the first case of an anti-gay preacher busted doing exactly what he preached against, and it won’t be the last, but this one was especially nasty because Rekers was also the founder of the bizarre and twisted “Feminine Boy Project,” a program that purported to “cure” boys as young as 4 years old of “effeminate tendencies.”

As I wrote in this post:

It’s religiously-motivated child abuse and quack pseudo-science serving the cause of hatred and bigotry.

Tonight on CNN at 10 pm ET, Anderson Cooper has a special show about the very young children whom Rekers abused with his brutal Pavlovian therapies during the 1970s — and the story is absolutely appalling: Therapy to change ‘feminine’ boy created a troubled man, family says.

Los Angeles (CNN) — Kirk Andrew Murphy seemed to have everything to live for. He put himself through school. He had a successful 8-year career in the Air Force. After the service, he landed a high profile position with an American finance company in India.

But in 2003 at age 38, Kirk Murphy took his own life.

A co-worker found him hanging from the fan of his apartment in New Delhi. His family has struggled for years to understand what happened.

“I used to spend so much time thinking, why would he kill himself at the age of 38? It doesn’t make any sense to me,” said Kirk’s sister, Maris Murphy. “What I now think is I don’t know how he made it that long.”

After Kirk’s death, Maris started a search that would uncover a dark family secret. That secret revealed itself during a phone conversation with her older brother Mark, who mentioned his distrust of any kind of therapy.

“Don’t you remember all that crap we went through at UCLA?” he asked her. Maris was too young to remember the details, but Mark remembered it vividly as a low point in their lives.

(Hat tip: Penn Bullock, one of the producers.)

Jump to top

Create a PageThis is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). Then browse to a site you want to post, select some text on the page to use for a quote, click the bookmarklet, and the Pages posting window will appear with the title, text, and any embedded video or audio files already filled in, ready to go.
Or... you can just click this button to open the Pages posting window right away.
Last updated: 2023-04-04 11:11 am PDT
LGF User's Guide RSS Feeds

Help support Little Green Footballs!

Subscribe now for ad-free access!Register and sign in to a free LGF account before subscribing, and your ad-free access will be automatically enabled.

Donate with
PayPal
Cash.app
Recent PagesClick to refresh
A Water War Is Brewing Between the U.S. And Mexico. Here’s Why A water dispute between the United States and Mexico that goes back decades is turning increasingly urgent in Texas communities that rely on the Rio Grande. Their leaders are now demanding the Mexican government either share water or face ...
Cheechako
Yesterday
Views: 80 • Comments: 0 • Rating: 0
Harper’s Magazine: Slippery Slope - How Private Equity Shapes a Ski Town …Big Sky stands apart for other reasons. The obvious distinction is the Yellowstone Club, a private resort hidden in the mountains above the community that Justin Farrell, a professor of sociology at Yale and the author of Billionaire Wilderness, ...
teleskiguy
2 days ago
Views: 291 • Comments: 0 • Rating: 2