Gay rights issue dogs McCollum

Gay rights, an issue that stung Bill McCollum in his unsuccessful 2004 race for the U.S. Senate, has put him on the defensive again this year in his campaign for governor.

Back then, Mel Martinez bashed McCollum in a Republican primary as too sympathetic to gay rights and won.

Recently, as attorney general, McCollum has taken a harder line on gay issues - but now finds himself under fire for spending $120,000 in taxpayer money to hire a since-discredited expert witness to testify in favor of keeping Florida's ban on gay adoption.

The witness, Christian conservative psychiatrist George Rekers, had previously displeased at least one judge by mingling science with biblical teachings, saying God opposes homosexuality.

A bigger scandal erupted two weeks ago when a Miami alternative newspaper revealed that Rekers, a veteran national-level anti-gay rights activist, had hired a male prostitute from a website called rentboy.com to accompany him on a trip to Europe.

When that news broke, McCollum initially was quoted as denying that it was his idea to hire Rekers. McCollum has also said he fought the court case over the ban only because he's constitutionally required to as attorney general, the lawyer for state agencies.

But state documents show the state Department of Children & Families, which McCollum said was responsible for hiring Rekers, opposed it; and McCollum had boasted to Republicans after his 2006 election as attorney general that he would fight to uphold Florida's adoption ban, the only such blanket ban in the nation.

In a July, 2007 letter to then-DCF Secretary Bob Butterworth, McCollum said his attorneys and solicitor general "strongly recommend" hiring Rekers, despite Butterworth's opposition because of the size of Rekers' fees.

McCollum said those attorneys "have searched long and hard for other expert witnesses with comparable expertise" and could find none.

McCollum reportedly told a meeting of the Indian River Republican Party shortly after his election as attorney general, "We're going to argue their socks off. ... We happen to believe in this party that this state law is the right law."

The Rekers story has made national headlines, and Democrats are having a field day with the situation, sending McCollum an "invoice" for taxpayers' money they say he wasted to serve his political needs. His chief Democratic opponent, Alex Sink, is also blasting him on the issue.

McCollum campaign spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said McCollum, as attorney general, "is sworn to uphold our laws," but also "does believe it is in the best interest of children to be ... adopted into a traditional family with a mother and father."

Asked about the Democrats' contention that his campaign should repay the cost of Rekers' testimony, she said, "We are not dignifying the Florida Democratic Party's silly antics with a response."

Campbell referred questions about the decision to hire Rekers to the Attorney General's Office.

A tumultuous relationship

McCollum has occasionally clashed with religious right groups despite his long reputation as a conservative.

In Congress, he voted to extend federal hate crimes legislation to cover sexual orientation. He has met with gay rights groups during campaigns, and has also supported limited embryonic stem cell research.

In the bitterly contested 2004 Senate primary, Mel Martinez used those stances against him, excoriating McCollum as "anti-family" and accusing him of "pandering to the radical gay agenda."

Martinez won the primary and the Senate seat.

In the past few years, however, several McCollum social issue stances have improved his standing with such groups as the Florida Family Policy Council, a leading religious conservative and anti-gay rights group. They included joining a lawsuit against same-sex marriage in California; opposing Seminole reservation gambling, and backing the state's ban on adoptions by same-sex couples.

Adoption ban was challenged

The ban was challenged in 2008 in an ACLU-sponsored lawsuit by foster parent Martin Gill of North Miami, who sought to adopt two young boys he and his male partner had taken in as foster children four years earlier.

The state presented two expert witnesses - Rekers and Walter Schumm of Kansas State University, who also integrates religious teaching into social science.

Rekers, formerly with the University of South Carolina, was one of the founders of James Dobson's Family Policy Council, a conservative Christian group that strongly opposes gay rights.

He was also a leader of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, an organization that contends homosexuality is a mental disorder that can be cured. He has testified frequently before courts and legislators on gay rights issues.

Rekers had been in Florida headlines before the court case.

In 1989, he co-authored a pamphlet titled "The Christian World View of the Family," along with Jerry Regier, an Oklahoma-based Christian rights activist.

It said men had "legitimate authority" over their wives, who owed "gentle, submissive obedience" to their husbands and who shouldn't work outside the home. It advocated "Biblical spanking" for children, and said the state had no right to enforce laws against "emotional neglect, emotional abuse (or) educational neglect" of children.

That made news in 2002 when then-Gov. Jeb Bush appointed Regier head of the state Department of Children & Families. Regier resigned in 2004 after several controversies, including one over DCF employees accepting gifts from state contractors.

In his 2008 testimony, Rekers contended that homosexual couples have higher incidence of mental problems and less stable relationships than heterosexual couples. Other experts opposing the ban testified there is no difference in incidence of mental health issues among children from both kinds of homes.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman threw out the ban, ruling that the two children, previously severely neglected, had overcome emotional and physical problems and thrived in the couple's care, and that the ban discriminated against gay people.

The state's appeal is pending.

In her judgment, Lederman said Rekers' testimony, for which the state paid $120,000, "was far from a neutral and unbiased recitation of the relevant scientific evidence," and "motivated by his strong ideological and theological convictions that are not consistent with the science."

"Based on his testimony and demeanor at trial, the court cannot consider his testimony to be credible nor worthy of forming the basis of public policy," she wrote.

Rekers had drawn a similar reaction from an Arkansas judge in a similar case four years earlier.

"It was apparent from Dr. Rekers' testimony and attitude on the stand that he was there primarily to promote his personal ideology," and was willing to distort study results to do so, wrote Pulaski County Circuit Judge Timothy Davis Fox.

His testimony was "extremely suspect and of little, if any, assistance to the court in resolving the difficult issues presented by this case," Fox wrote.

Rekers charged $300 an hour for 402.31 hours of work on his testimony in the two-day Florida trial.

The Florida Attorney General's Office had expected to pay about half that amount, but neglected to pin down the amount in a contract. They paid up after Rekers threatened to sue, according to state documents.