Tell Bill McCollum: We want our money back!
Attorney General Bill McCollum spent $120,000 of our tax dollars on a fraud in his quest to pander to bigots and homophobes and we need your help to get our money back.
Florida is the only state in the nation that bans gay adoption, and McCollum urged the state to hire infamous anti-gay crusader George Rekers as an expert witness to defend Florida's indefensible gay adoption ban. As the Orlando Sentinel's Scott Maxwell reported, "First, Dr. George Rekers' 'expertise' was essentially dismissed as junk science by the courts. Then, Rekers' anti-gay credentials were naturally called into question after he was caught traveling with a gay hooker who advertised his services on a porn site." McCollum personally arranged for Rekers' hiring as an expert witness and spent $120,000 in taxpayer money for his bogus testimony.
The hateful hypocrisy of this homophobe for hire is bad enough, but the real scandal here involves Attorney General Bill McCollum, who gave Rekers $120,000 of our money even though two courts had already found Rekers not credible as an expert witness. Despite his attempts to backpedal and blame others, the fact is McCollum personally vouched for Rekers and aggressively advocated he be hired despite objections from the cash-strapped Department of Children and Families. Public records show McCollum ignored the terms of the written agreement with Rekers and doubled his pay from $60,000 to $120,000.
Rekers would have to have spent 400 hours preparing for the few hours of testimony he gave to justify his $120,000 tab to Florida taxpayers. And Florida isn't the first place he's pulled this scam. He tried it in Arkansas too. The Arkansas Supreme Court concluded Rekers testimony was "pointless". When Rekers tried to more than double his cost, the state refused the extra expenses, took him to court and won. Why didn't McCollum fight for our money too?
While Florida maintains its shameful position as the only state with a ban on gay people adopting, thousands of children languish in our foster care system hoping to be adopted. Hundreds age out of the system each year never knowing a permanent home or the network of support and protection that comes from having a family.
