In 1983 Rekers was on the founding board of the Family Research Council, a non-profit Christian lobbying organization, and he is a former officer and scientific advisor of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), an organization offering conversion therapy, a pseudoscientific practice intended to convert homosexuals to heterosexuality.
In 2011, Anderson Cooper 360° featured a story about the fate of Kirk Murphy, a child Rekers states that he cured in many of his books.
Murphy's siblings and mother state that the therapy ultimately had lasting damage to the boy and led to him growing up to be a man who grappled constantly with his homosexuality before committing suicide in 2003 at the age of 38.
[10] His work has been criticized by other scholars for reinforcing sex-role stereotypes and for reliance on dubious rationales for therapeutic intervention (e.g. parents' worries that their children might become homosexuals).
Professor Michael R. Schiavi wrote in a 2001 Modern Language Studies journal article that the work was a "horror show written for parents anxious to re-direct sissy sons to sexual righteousness".
"[21] In Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity, Rekers provides advice to parents which he claims can help them prevent their children from becoming homosexual.
Zucker wrote that, as in some of his other work, such as Growing Up Straight (1982), Rekers ignored, dismissed, or distorted scientific data to prevent it from conflicting with his religious views.
"[23] The neuroscientist Simon LeVay commented that Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity reveals his "virulent antipathy towards homosexuality.
"[24] Jackie M. Blount found Rekers's "language and logic reminiscent of works from earlier decades", comparing Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity to Peter and Barbara Wyden's Growing Up Straight (1968).
"[25] The journalist Robyn E. Blumner of the Tampa Bay Times criticized Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity for Rekers's "gay-bashing" rhetoric, such as his claim that gay activists secretly want to legalize pedophilia.
Shortly after the announcement of Regier's appointment, it was disclosed that in 1989 the California-based Coalition on Revival had published a fundamentalist tract titled The Christian World View of the Family under the names of Regier and Rekers, which condemned working mothers as being in "bondage" and argued that the government should have no right to place children in protective custody except in cases of extreme abuse or neglect.
The tract's authors also "affirm that Biblical spanking may cause temporary and superficial bruises or welts that do not constitute child abuse" and "deny that the Bible countenances any other definition of the family, such as the sharing of a household by homosexual partners, and that society's laws should be modified in any way to broaden the definition of family.
Mark Pietrzyk, of the gay group the Log Cabin Republicans, has stated that Rekers' method uses aversion therapy – a practice opposed by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) – that punishes "nonconforming" behavior such as swaggering in girls or limp wrists in boys and rewards "conforming" behavior such as girls playing with dolls and boys playing basketball.
[32]: 2 ) According to Rekers himself, he spends much of his time with boys whose peers regard them as "sissy" and "effeminate" with the goal of reversing those traits and "help[ing] these children to become better adapted to themselves and to their environment.
His testimony has been strongly criticized by a number of parties including trial judges; the American Civil Liberties Union has asserted that his personal beliefs regarding homosexuality interfere with his ability to give an unbiased professional opinion on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) topics, including gay adoption.
[34] Legal experts have discussed whether his involvement with a male prostitute in 2010 could render his testimony unreliable, possibly affecting the outcome of pending cases in Florida and California.
[36] His testimony was rebutted by Dr. Michael Lamb, a psychiatrist, who stated that there was no scientific evidence for the assertion that homosexuals were worse parents than heterosexuals.
"[38][39] Following the case, Rekers billed the Arkansas Department of Health and Human Services a sum of $165,000 for his testimony, an amount that far exceeded what the state had anticipated.
"[38] It later emerged that Rekers had been paid nearly $120,000 for his testimony on behalf of the state, which had been solicited specifically by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum.
[59] Frank Rich of the New York Times wrote: "Thanks to Rekers's clownish public exposure, we now know that his professional judgments are windows into his cracked psyche, not gay people's.
"[59] Newsweek's June 7, 2010 issue's Back Story listed Rekers, among others, as a prominent conservative activist who has a record of supporting anti-gay legislation and was later caught in a gay sex scandal.
[60] Rekers co-authored four papers with Ole Ivar Lovaas, a psychology professor at the same university, on children with atypical gender behaviors.