AdamKadmon43
Jun 19, 2010, 11:01 PM
E-mails dug up by Florida newspapers recently indicate that gubernotorial candidate Attorney General Bill McCollum overrode strong warnings from top staff members to hire an anti-gay activist to help plead the state's court case against allowing homosexuals to adopt children.
That activist --- George Rekers, a former professor of psychiatry at the University of South Carolina and co-founder of the Family Research Council ---- went on to become a national joke. He was exposed earlier this year for hiring a young male "ESCORT" as a traveling companion and masseur from rentboy.com (Yes, rentboy.com sounds like a joke, too, but it's real).
But the joke doesn't stop here.
McCollum not only lost the court case --- the gay ban was declared unconstitutional----- the judge called Rekers' testimony neither "credible nor worthy of forming the basis of public policy." Rekers depends heavily on personal beliers, not scientific data, to support his contention that homosexuals are unsuitable as parents.
It gets worse.
McCollum (taxpayers, that is) ended up paying Rekers twice the contracted fee. He got $120,000 for helping wreck the state's case (which deserved to be rejected by the court).
It was Rekers' poor performance in a similar case in Arkansas that led Florida Assistant Attorney General Valerie Martin to recomment that he not be hired, newspapers reported. But she was ordered to hire him "against my strong cautions."
None of this deters McCollum. "If you look at the record," he told the St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald Bureau, "you will see he actually earned (the fee). He defilnitely put the hours and the time in. This is not a case where we overpaid him."
The record??? It shows Rekers getting paid twice to do the same thing, the Times/Herald reported. He billed the state for 30 hours (at $300 an hour) in 2004 to read "relevant publications" on the issue, and then another 30 hours a year later to re-read the same material.
Good work if you can get it.
I hope the good citizens of Florida have the good judgement to not elect this idiot as governor.
(excerpted from the Pensacola News Journal with permission)
That activist --- George Rekers, a former professor of psychiatry at the University of South Carolina and co-founder of the Family Research Council ---- went on to become a national joke. He was exposed earlier this year for hiring a young male "ESCORT" as a traveling companion and masseur from rentboy.com (Yes, rentboy.com sounds like a joke, too, but it's real).
But the joke doesn't stop here.
McCollum not only lost the court case --- the gay ban was declared unconstitutional----- the judge called Rekers' testimony neither "credible nor worthy of forming the basis of public policy." Rekers depends heavily on personal beliers, not scientific data, to support his contention that homosexuals are unsuitable as parents.
It gets worse.
McCollum (taxpayers, that is) ended up paying Rekers twice the contracted fee. He got $120,000 for helping wreck the state's case (which deserved to be rejected by the court).
It was Rekers' poor performance in a similar case in Arkansas that led Florida Assistant Attorney General Valerie Martin to recomment that he not be hired, newspapers reported. But she was ordered to hire him "against my strong cautions."
None of this deters McCollum. "If you look at the record," he told the St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald Bureau, "you will see he actually earned (the fee). He defilnitely put the hours and the time in. This is not a case where we overpaid him."
The record??? It shows Rekers getting paid twice to do the same thing, the Times/Herald reported. He billed the state for 30 hours (at $300 an hour) in 2004 to read "relevant publications" on the issue, and then another 30 hours a year later to re-read the same material.
Good work if you can get it.
I hope the good citizens of Florida have the good judgement to not elect this idiot as governor.
(excerpted from the Pensacola News Journal with permission)