Matt Gunterman June 19th, 2007
As a society and a state, we only have so much energy — whether it be intellectual, emotional, or physical — to devote to the causes we collectively identify as important to our present and future.
Where we put our collective efforts and what we make our common priorities are our free choices, and each and every state and our nation as a whole faces its choices.
And those choices have consequences.
I think it’s fair to say, and I believe historians of Kentucky agree on this point, that the aggregate of our state’s decision making since about the end of the Civil War has been on the less progressive side, and the end result is that — relative to the other states — Kentucky has fallen behind. We are undeniably at the bottom of nearly every indicator one cares to cite on trends of potential and prosperity.
Lots of lip service comes from our business and political communities about doing what needs to be done to “get Kentucky ahead” in the nation, but when the going gets a little tough, Kentucky always seems to take a little break from the action to wipe its brow and contemplate the world, while the persistent states chug right along, rarely taking their eye off the goal. That’s what happened in Kentucky with education reform and investment, that’s what’s happened with infrastructural development, that’s what’s taken place with the environment and natural resource management, and it’s even a trend that’s measurable in our culture.
Our culture? Yes, our culture. Most people probably think of Kentucky’s culture as an asset, and in many ways it most certainly is, from the landscapes of the Bluegrass, to Churchill Downs, to the musical sounds of Appalachia and Rosine and so much more.
Yet, there are terribly regressive elements to our culture, as well, and that fact has been made painfully clear in the reaction of Kentucky’s social and political “establishment” to President George W. Bush’s nomination of Dr. James W. Holsinger, with his record of an irrational and unscientific anti-gay agenda, as the nation’s next surgeon general. I’m not talking about the reaction of the everyday Kentuckian here because we haven’t seen any measure of it. What I’m speaking of is the collective voice of Kentucky’s chattering class, its self-defined elite population: it has come out in full force behind the Holsinger nomination.
Before I turn to the specifics of that reaction and the problems with it, I want to first make this more general point. Why is it important for Kentucky to embrace — not just tolerate — its homosexual population? Well, can any society prosper and turn its back on something like 5 percent of its population — a population that research tells us is generally very well educated and earns high-than-average incomes? And, keep in mind, while we turn our backs on them, other states are welcoming them with open arms. Some people might argue that we can do without that highly productive 5 percent or — perhaps it is better to say — we can do without that 5 percent producing at its highest potential.
Yet, imagine the aggregate effect of oppressing and/or losing that population over the course of a generation. It will be substantial, won’t it? Furthermore, our loss will be the gain of others. These people won’t simply roll over and not produce in their lives and careers; they’ll simply go elsewhere and find success. And, let’s be realistic here: a generation from now, attitudes towards homosexuals will be very accepting and lax, just as in the last generation we’ve seen attitudes towards race and interracial marriage liberalize.
So, for a moment, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of our grandchildren, who will not have inherited our general fear and hatred of homosexuals, but who will have inherited the inferior society and economy that we ourselves built around that fear and hatred. Attitudes will change, but there’s nothing stopping them from changing now except our own refusal to do so.
The hard thing for us to do as Kentuckians today is to say to ourselves, “You know, I don’t agree with it, I don’t think it’s right in the eyes of God, I would never engage in that sort of activity myself, but by golly these people are human beings, taxpayers, and they have their civil rights, and so let them be and let’s build a society where we call prosper and all have an equal stake.”
That would be the hard thing for Kentuckians to do, and — quite frankly — I can tell you today that we aren’t going to do it. We aren’t going to do it because its the cultural equivalent of work, and we’re taking the lazy way out on this one. We’ll let time take its course, and we’ll let our children’s children suffer the consequences and lament the repercussions of what was our emotional sloth.
Now, back to Kentucky’s chattering class and its favorable reception of Dr. James W. Holsinger’s nomination. Both the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader have endorsed the nomination, and even as more facts about Holsinger’s controversial and pseudo-scientifically problematic views on homosexuality have come to light, they have continued to aggressively defend their previous endorsements.
In fact, their articles have taken a rather populist tone by stating that Holsinger’s greatest sin is arguing that “male homosexual sex was unnatural and unhealthy,” a statement most Kentuckians likely agree with, but their belief of it, or Holsinger’s for that matter, still doesn’t change the fact that it’s well outside the realm of established medical consensus. Furthermore, Holsinger’s huge lapse in judgment was his attempt to wrap his own religious opinions on homosexuality in an aura of science by disingenuously cherry picking research data.
The Op-Ed pages of the papers have been filled with taunts like this from Martin Cothran, a senior policy analyst for the Family Foundation of Kentucky:
Yes, it sounds incredible, but there it is: a doctor who thinks anal sex isn’t healthful. Just what turnip truck did this guy fall off of anyway? Where has he been the last few years? Studying AIDS data or something? OK, we know that people used to take medicine seriously and that once upon a time, doctors based their opinions on actual evidence. But aren’t we past all that? Haven’t we come to the realization some things are more important than medical facts?
Or, let’s take this piece from Matt Barber, policy director for cultural issues for Concerned Women for America, which both Kentucky papers have now run.
The irrefutable reality that thousands of former homosexuals have chosen to leave the gay lifestyle they once chose to enter serves to further bolster — if not prove entirely –Holsinger’s advised medical assessment.
Kentucky’s major newspapers are gladly serving as platforms for the radical right to rile up the basest fears and hatreds of Kentuckians. Why? Because to stir up this outrage serves the purposes of the chattering class: to push the Holsinger nomination at all costs. The chattering class in Kentucky tolerates gays, so long as those gays are content to know their place and accept their second-class status.
Now, however, this arrangement is out of whack because the progress of the nation and Kentucky’s gay community is conflicting with the agenda of the state’s chattering class. The chattering class wants a Kentucky surgeon general; they want the prestige and have grand visions of Holsinger developing into the next C. Everret Coop.
The gay community and the nation as a whole, however, believes it’s time we stand up to the bigotry that Holsinger’s professionally stated opinions represent. The opinions he holds, in other words, are unacceptable to the mainstream of the nation, regardless of what the mainstream of Kentucky is; the nomination, after all, is to serve as the nation’s surgeon general, not Kentucky’s.
The surgeon general is in significant part a figurehead position, a symbol of the vibrancy of the medical profession in the United States, and it’s quite obvious to everyone involved but Kentucky’s chattering class that this nation can find a far more appropriate and unifying figure to be that head than Dr. James W. Holsinger.
The person in all of this who has disappointed me most, however, is Democratic Congressman John Yarmuth, who represents Louisville and who yesterday endorsed Holsinger’s nomination.
Yarmuth fashions himself a liberal, and we don’t have many politicians in Kentucky who do that. He represents a traditionally Democratic city and district, one with a sizable population of people who have suffered from persecution in the past and continue to do so. I don’t expect Republicans or conservatives to understand the nuances of this issue or even what’s at stake for our future in it. That’s why we have liberals and progressives: to imagine a better future and fight for it. That’s their social and political function.
We needed Yarmuth’s leadership on this one, and we’re not going to get it. It’s a shame. We know how the future will judge his failure on this one, and I for one plan to be around to remember it.
As I pointed out yesterday, if the paper that Holsinger had published in 1991 had argued against interracial marriage, a practice which is still abhorred by many on the religious right in this nation, I doubt Yarmuth’s representative would have said that the congressman:
“…finds ample reason to believe that those opinions will not interfere with (Holsinger’s) work (as surgeon general), that as a practicing professional he’s never let that interfere.”
So, the chattering class in Kentucky could have made a powerful statement in opposing the Holsinger nomination. It could have said:
‘It would be flattering to have a Kentuckian as surgeon general, but unfortunately President Bush, while choosing a man with impressive professional credentials, has also selected one whose religious campaign against homosexuals, which he attempted to bolster by misrepresenting and inappropriately contextualizing scientific data, places the nominee outside the mainstream on the issue of increasing tolerance of homosexuals in American society. This issue is one our nation — and our state, especially — needs leadership on, and we believe that James W. Holsinger cannot provide that leadership. Therefore, we oppose his nomination.
But that didn’t happen.
