WHAT ARE LITTLE BOYS MADE OF?

You may or may not have seen the two episodes of "The "Sissy Boy" Experiment" on "Anderson Cooper 360", the nightly news show on CNN, about the young boy, Kirk Murphy, who was not quite five years old when he was taken to UCLA for early intervention treatment in an experimental program for young boys who showed evidence of excessive femininity. Yes, that is UCLA. The purpose of the treatment was to change the excessively effeminate behavior and prevent the young boys from possibly growing up gay.

The story is heartbreaking. If you'd like to watch the two episodes which have already aired, here are the links:

The "Sissy Boy" Experiment Part One

The "Sissy Boy" Experiment Part Two

Jim Burroway, who blogs at Box Turtle Bulletin, investigated the story, and he will be seen on another episode on CNN sometime next week. Jim published the results of his separate, in-depth investigation, which gives a much fuller and more detailed report on Kirk's story, at Box Turtle Bulletin under the title What Are Little Boys Made Of?. Jim's report is long, in seven parts, but I plead with you to take the time to read it. I read it in two intervals because the report is so very tragic and emotionally wrenching that I had to stop at Part 5 and resume the next day.

Kirk's main counselor seems to have been George Rekers, a young graduate student at the time. Yes, the anti-gay activist George Rekers, the co-founder of the Family Research Council, who was caught recently at the Miami Airport traveling with a young male escort.

Rekers, who is also a professor emeritus of neuropsychiatry at the University of South Carolina and a Baptist minister, recently testifed against gay adoption in Florida, where he resides.

No doubt Rekers testified as an expert against gay adoption. If you made up the story, no one would believe you, but, tragically, the story is all too true. Kirk's picture at the head of the post shows him at about the age that the therapy began.

As Jim Burroway says:

In this original BTB investigation, we speak with his family and friend who knew the real “Kraig” to uncover the truth behind Reker’s greatest success story. Their stories reveals the tragedy of a terrible experiment on a very young boy which would haunt him for the rest of his life. It is not only an indictment of a man who built his anti-gay career on Kirk’s suffering, but a rebuke to others — those in the mental health profession then and in the contemporary ex-gay movement today — who would place their careers and agendas ahead of the well-being of this young boy and countless others like him.

Kirk Murphy committed suicide in 2003 at the age of 38.

Thanks to Jim Burroway for his hard work in investigating and telling Kirk's story.

Photo from Box Turtle Bulletin.

FOR THE WHINERS ABOUT THE "RALLY"

From Jim Burroway, who lives in Tucson, writing at Box Turtle Bulletin:

The memorial was nothing short of magnificent, and it was exactly what this city needed. It was, at turns, somber and celebratory. Tucsonans have been in a severely depressed funk, dazed and stunned that something like this could happen here.

I hear some small-minded grumbling that the event was somehow too “raucous” or a “rally.” Well you know what? A rally is just what we needed. Those who sit in judgment in their comfortable offices and studios on the coasts tut-tutting last night’s memorial haven’t had to drive by the still-closed Safeway every morning and every evening to and from work. They haven’t been within a thousand miles of the nightly vigils at UMC and at Gabrielle Giffords’s congressional office. They haven’t turned on television to see their own neighbors grieving in wall-to-wall coverage.

Jim should know.