Let's just rename him "Hole Singer" yar!
asfan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: THE NEW YORK TIMES
July 10, 2007
Editorial
A NomineeÂ’s Abnormal Views
The Senate Health Committee will have to dig beneath the surface on Thursday
to consider the nomination of Dr. James Holsinger to be surgeon general. Dr.
Holsinger has high-level experience as a health administrator, but there are
disturbing indications that he is prejudiced against homosexuals.
Though routinely called “the nation’s top doctor,” the surgeon general is a
midlevel official who oversees the 6,000 uniformed professionals in the Public
Health Service. His main mission is to serve as “America’s chief health
educator,” with potentially enormous capacity to shape public opinion.
Dr. Holsinger served for 26 years in the Department of Veterans Affairs,
where he rose to be chief medical director and under secretary for health.
After retiring, he became chancellor of the University of Kentucky Medical
Center and, briefly, secretary for health and family services in Kentucky.
Although he is a Christian conservative, he is difficult to pigeonhole
ideologically. He testified against an anti-cloning bill in Kentucky that he
felt would impede research, a position at odds with that of the president. He
backed a session on lesbian health issues at a state health conference despite
protests from angry legislators, favored raising cigarette taxes in a
tobacco-growing state and worked to limit junk food in schools.
What’s troubling is the view he once expressed — and may still hold — on
homosexuality, through his activities as a lay leader in the United Methodist
Church. On the churchÂ’s judicial council, he supported a minister who refused
to allow a gay man to join his congregation and argued that a lesbian minister
should be removed because church doctrine deems the practice of homosexuality
to be “incompatible with Christian teaching.” His supporters say these rulings
should not be read as his personal views because the council canÂ’t change
church doctrine. However, some council members opposed his views, and the
bishops later rejected one decision.
His strongest statement on homosexuality can be found in a murky, loosely
reasoned paper that he wrote for a church committee in 1991. Titled
“Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality,” the paper purported to be a scientific
and medical review. It argued that gay sex was abnormal on anatomical and
physiological grounds and unhealthy, in that anal sex can lead to rectal
injuries and sexually transmitted diseases. Dr. Holsinger did not brand the
large number of heterosexual women who engage in anal sex as abnormal, failed
to acknowledge the huge burden of disease spread heterosexually and implied
that women are more likely than men to avoid injuries with generous
lubrication.
The Bush administration says the white paper reflected the scientific
understanding of the time, but it reads like a veneer of science cloaking an
aversion to homosexuality. The committee should examine whether Dr. Holsinger
cherry-picked the literature or represented it objectively. Most important, it
must determine whether Dr. Holsinger holds these benighted views today. The
Senate should not confirm a surgeon general who considers practicing
homosexuals abnormal and diseased.
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