Thursday, June 07, 2007

Surgeon General Bigot

By Michael J.W. Stickings

If all goes as planned, the nation's top doctor will be an anti-gay bigot. ABC News is reporting this:

President Bush's nominee for surgeon general, Dr. James W. Holsinger Jr., wrote a paper in 1991 that purported to make the medical argument that homosexuality is unnatural and unhealthy. Doctors who reviewed the paper derided it as prioritizing political ideology over science, and Democratic aides on Capitol Hill say the paper will make his confirmation hearings problematic.

Holsinger, 68, presented "The Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality" in January 1991 to a United Methodist Church's committee to study homosexuality. (Read the paper here.) The church was then considering changing its view that homosexuality violates Christian teaching, though it ultimately did not do so. Relying on footnotes from mainstream medical publications, Holsinger argued that homosexuality isn't natural or healthy.

Yes, go read the paper. It purports to be a purely scientific argument for what he calls "the complementarity of the human sexes," with respect to both intercourse and procreation, but what it really is is an attack on homosexual activity and hence on homosexuality itself. And remember, it was written in 1991, not 1891!

Holsinger does not allow that homosexuality could in any way be natural, or even safe. All he does is point to "evidence" that anal sex is dangerous: "[T]he varied sexual practices of homosexual men have resulted in a diverse and expanded concept of sexually transmitted disease and associated trauma." Apparently it did not occur to him that heterosexuals also engage in anal sex and other such "varied sexual practices". He even addresses, of all things, fisting. Indeed, there is a strange sensationalist quality to the whole paper, as if it somehow brought him pleasure to write about "anal-sphincter dysfunction" in all its many forms, not to mention "forceful anal penetration without lubrication against a resistant sphincter".

What is clear from all this is that Bush has nominated yet another theocratic ideologue for a key position in government. Hard to believe, eh?

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3 Comments:

  • Plus the guy starts Hope Springs Community Church which will pray the gay right outa you.
    And this is supposed to be the nominee who disseminates medical advice to the entirety of american society?

    By Blogger nolocontendere, at 4:01 AM  

  • Another true Republican pervert. I remember Ken Starr's lascivious report on Clinton's sex life - it's the same thing. These guys are obsesses with sex and can't allow themselves to think about it unless it's in the context of condemnation.

    Someday they'll find Holsinger in some sordid hotel room or bus station toilet with a crack head male prostitute and he'll go running to Jesus or insist that he was only discussing the bible with him.

    Bush's Washington has become one big rotten log with creepy crawly things under it.

    By Blogger Capt. Fogg, at 8:45 AM  

  • Just give me that red hot moralism, baby!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 1:45 PM  

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