Anti-'Sissy' Terrorism

Anderson Cooper 360 Airs Investigation on Ex-Gay Therapy This Week

Filed By Jake Weinraub | June 09, 2011 12:15 PM

This week CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 aired a three-part series "The Sissy Boy Experiment: The Consequences Of Ex-Gay Therapy", which traces the effect government-funded gender-normalizing therapy had on a young boy named Kirk Murphy in 1970, who took his own life at 38. Dr. George Rekers, who co-founded the conservative Family Research Council and was recently caught traveling with a gay escort by the Miami New Times claimed credit for the experiments, writing numerous articles and publications citing Murphy's treatment as a success. The 5-year-old received ten months of treatment, which included being placed in a room and given the option of "girls" toys and "boys" toys, receiving punishment or praise from his mother if he made the gender-variant choice. In the home, the family was encouraged to implement a poker chip count system, where blue chips were rewarded for masculine behavior and red chip for feminine, which would result in beatings from Murphy's father.

Murphy's older brother Mark told Anderson Cooper how his brother's outgoing personality began to change:

He had no idea how to relate to people. It was like somebody just walked up and turned his light switch off, and 'we got what we wanted and we'll see you later'.

Jim Burroway, who is keeping up with the investigation on the Box Turtle Bulletin, explains the surprising fact that Murphy's mother only once came into contact with Rekers, mistaking him for a psychiatrist's aide. Burroway writes:

"Dr. Green had two college boys that were working with him," [Murphy's mother] said. "Assistants, aides, whatever you want to call them. The only one I can remember, his name was George. The other one I don't remember his name at all. But I do remember George because he was very, very kind to Kirk and Kirk liked him, and Kirk communicated really well with him. And when Dr. Green and George and the other one came to Kirk's birthday party at our house in Saugas, I had bought water guns and they were all shooting water guns at each other. Kirk just thought that was just the cat's meow, you know. So if George turned out to be a psychiatrist, he was probably a pretty good one."

Well, that was George Rekers, I explained. She said that she couldn't remember his last name. But as time went on, it became clear, both to her and to me, that this young college student that Kaytee gave so little importance to was the famous behavioral therapist who claimed so much credit for supposedly arresting Kirk's developing homosexuality.

Reflecting on Murphy's suicide, his older sister Maris told Anderson Cooper:

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. What I now think is, I don't know how he made it that long.

Check out another installment of the investigation (which aired last night) where Cooper informs Rekers of Murphy's suicide, here: