Matt Gunterman October 22nd, 2007

Even though it appears the nomination of Dr. James W. Holsinger is dead (and let’s hope that’s the case), more troubling information about the man’s past continues to come forward.

Former UK Chancellor Holsinger and $20 million of Church Money
by Rev. Andrew J. Weaver and Lawrence H. McGaughey

Dr. James Holsinger, former Chancellor at the UK medical School, is President Bush’s choice for Surgeon General. He has been a major player in a contentious and controversial seven year lawsuit involving his own church. Before Holsinger is confirmed by the Senate he needs to address serious ethical issues regarding his conduct in the law suit while employed by UK.

The litigation involved the sale in 1995 of a United Methodist Church (UMC) hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, and the disposition of the $20 million in proceeds. The hospital’s trustees refused to hand over the assets to the owner, the UMC in Kentucky. Instead, the self-appointed trustees, calling themselves the Good Samaritan Foundation (GSF) placed the funds under their sole control and withheld the money from the church for five years. The church was forced to engage in a long and costly lawsuit to find out where the money was and to regain its property. Holsinger became a GSF trustee in July 2000, joining in the lawsuit against his own church.

According to several individuals intimately acquainted with the litigation, Holsinger actually became the driving force in the prolongation of the lawsuit. Shortly after GSF lost in court for the second time in 2006, Holsinger stated that the GSF trustees, which he chaired, would persist in its legal battle. In a stunning denunciation of his own church, Holsinger publicly stated his personal belief that the UMC was “only interested in the Foundation’s money, not its cause” [health care for the poor and disadvantaged]. It was only when Holsinger was named as Surgeon General that the litigation came to an abrupt halt. Within a matter of days after his May 24, 2007, nomination, Holsinger resigned from the GSF trustees and the lawsuit, indicating that to continue would be incompatible with an appointment as Surgeon General. Within a mere two weeks, the suit was finally settled — after over seven years!

What might have motivated Holsinger to be a part of long, costly litigation against his own church? Following the money offers insight. From July 1997, through June 2006, the GSF and a corporate subsidiary dispersed $8,430,363 in grants — of which $5,314,670 (63 percent) was given to University of Kentucky (UK) programs in medicine, nursing, dentistry, and public health. This included endowing two academic chairs valued at a million dollars each — one in nursing and the other in public health. These endowed chairs and several million in other gifts were awarded while Holsinger was fundraising for these UK programs in his job as Chancellor of the Chandler Medical Center of UK from 1994 through 2003. The grants continued to flow after he left the position of Chancellor, while he continued as a GSF trustee until May 2007.

The GSF’s contributions to UK medical and its related schools have been so significant that the foundation is listed on the highest tier of honored benefactors to the university, along with major corporations such as Alcoa, DuPont, IBM, and the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company.

What makes the GSF awards to UK more remarkable is that they were awarded in contradiction to the foundation’s own standards of grant-making. According to the grant policy guidelines of the GSF, “[m]ajor organizations” such as “[h]ospitals, [c]olleges and [u]niversities are not eligible as a general statement,” although exceptions could be made by the trustees. The exception in this case became the rule when it came to UK.

In addition, for more than a decade the return on the investments of the foundation was dismal. In May, 2005, GSF admitted in a letter to making poor return on the assets and to conflicts of interest by some of the trustees. Three GSF trustees had been involved in managing the assets of GSF while serving on the board. The church representatives told the GSF that it was “unconscionable” that after a decade the funds were not being professionally managed by experts who had no personal connection with the board.

The Surgeon General is our chief health educator, overseeing the work of the 6,000-member Public Health Service. It is a position that requires the highest ethical standards and personal conduct. Before Holsinger is confirmed, the Senate must ask serious questions about his ethics, especially regarding a costly lawsuit against his church and money funneled to UK.

Rev. Andrew J. Weaver, Ph.D., is a United Methodist minister and research psychologist who has written extensively on the role of clergy in preventive mental health care. He lives in New York City. He has co-authored 14 books including: Counseling Survivors of Traumatic Events (Abingdon, 2003), Reflections on Grief and the Spiritual Journey (Abingdon, 2005), Counseling Persons with Addictions and Compulsions (Pilgrim, 2007), and Connected Spirits: Friends and Spiritual Journeys (Pilgrim, 2007).

Lawrence H. McGaughey, Esq., is an attorney practicing law in New York City with specialties in real estate, trusts and estates, and not-for-profit organizations. He has represented many United Methodist churches and organizations and is the Chancellor of the New York Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. Any views stated in this article are personal and are not intended to represent the views of any client.

• James W. Holsinger , Surgeon General
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Matt Gunterman October 16th, 2007

You’ll recall that this summer Pres. Bush nominated Kentucky’s very won Dr. James W. Holsinger to be the nation’s next surgeon general. The nomination immediately drew condemnation from progressives because of Holsinger’s rather loopy views on human sexuality. He also ran into some trouble because of his poor record in the area of Veterans health care, too. It appears that Holsinger is now dead in the water. And that’s something to be thankful for.

Surgeon general nominee on hold

By Justin Thompson
Scripps Howard News Service

WASHINGTON - Three months after Dr. James Holsinger answered some sharp questions from senators, his nomination to be the next surgeon general appears to be on life support.

The 68-year-old Kentuckian, whose critics cried foul about a paper he wrote years ago condemning homosexual sex, needs Senate confirmation to become the nation’s 18th surgeon general.

Melissa Wagoner, a spokeswoman for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., who chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said members are waiting for the nominee to answer follow-up questions. Wagoner said she could not release the questions while Holsinger continues to work on them.

Craig Orfield, the committee’s communications director, said he knows of no date for a vote.

A spokeswoman for the White House said Holsinger is working on the questions but could not say when he would respond.

[...]

“From the tea leaves that I am reading, there is not a lot of interest in getting a vote,” he said.

His organization has neither opposed nor endorsed Holsinger’s nomination, Farrell said.

He would not speculate on whether Holsinger might remove his name from consideration or if the administration might ask him to do so.

He said he expected that Dr. Steven Galson, who has served as acting surgeon general for the last three months, would continue in that role through the end of the year.

[...]

ome of Holsinger’s opponents said the White House might support him in theory, but in practice, has done little to move him closer to becoming surgeon general.

“They’re not pushing to get this through,” said Becky Dansky, federal legislative director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

“It’s kind of dead in the water at this point.”

But the Bush administration said it has not reconsidered its endorsement of Holsinger.

“The White House certainly still supports him,” said Emily Lawrimore, a White House spokeswoman.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., of Louisville, who introduced Holsinger to the committee in July, said then that the nomination is “the right prescription to help America confront today’s health challenge.” This week, a McConnell spokesman said that the Louisville Republican continues to support Holsinger.

McConnell’s fellow Kentucky Republican, Sen. Jim Bunning of Southgate, also championed Holsinger at the hearing, but has since remained silent. A spokesman for Bunning said the senator remains steadfast in his support.

Unfortunately for Holsinger, neither McConnell nor Bunning is a member of Kennedy’s committee, and Sen. Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., the committee’s ranking Republican, has not said how he would vote.

[...]

Dansky puts those chances at “slim to none.” Three of the Democrats on the committee - Democrats Barack Obama of Illinois, Hillary Clinton of New York and Chris Dodd of Connecticut - seem unlikely to vote to confirm Holsinger and risk a backlash from gay and lesbian voters against their presidential campaigns, she said. And Kennedy has a record of voting for gay and lesbian rights.

Other committee members, including Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., have not publicly announced how they would vote, though Brown and Mikulski questioned Holsinger aggressively during the hearing.

Mikulski clashed with him when he was the VA’s chief medical director, accusing him of being apathetic toward what she called the system’s mistreatment of women.

“There is no reason to think he is going to make it out of committee,” Dansky said.

“The votes just aren’t there.”

***

• James W. Holsinger , Surgeon General
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Matt Gunterman July 16th, 2007

This bit of questioning of Dr. James W. Holsinger by Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) during the former’s confirmation hearing for U.S. Surgeon General escaped my attention the other day. I can’t say that his response will win any converts to his support. This from the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Malia Rulon:

WASHINGTON - U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown turned to an unusual line of questioning during the Senate confirmation hearing last Thursday of James Holsinger, a former chancellor of the University of Kentucky medical center tapped by President Bush to be the next surgeon general.

Holsinger has drawn fire over a paper he wrote 16 years ago declaring that gay sex was unhealthy and unnatural. That prompted Brown, a Democrat, to ask: “There have been reports that over 50 Arabic translators have been fired from the Pentagon simply because they are gay. Given your past statements on homosexuality, what do you see as a greater threat to the health and safety of Americans: untranslated documents and intercepts from al-Qaida, or gay people?”

Holsinger, not surprisingly, didn’t know quite what to say.

“Well, that’s certainly an interesting question that you have posed, senator. I’ve not had an opportunity to think through, as you might guess, an answer to that question at all,” he said. “I would have grave concern for having the effective translators that we might need in order to be able to provide for the safety for our American people.”

[...]

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Matt Gunterman July 12th, 2007

My efforts this morning to live blog the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions confirmation hearings for Dr. James W. Holsinger’s nomination to surgeon general got complicated by blips in technology. In the end, I had picture but no sound. All I can report from my observations is that Holsinger looked rather nervous, but who wouldn’t be appearing under the cloud left by the testimony of George W. Bush’s first surgeon general, Dr. Richard Carmona, who essentially said that he had Bush minions watching his every move and vetting his every word.

In the end, Holsinger’s fate in these hearings will come down to whether the focus of the attention is on Holsinger himself or Bush’s persistent placement of ideologues in such positions.

The problem for Holsinger is that his record has demonstrated that he has the capacity to be a strong ideologue and potentially be a great “team player” with all the other Bushies.

Holsinger stated that what he wrote in 1991 does not reflect where he is today. Fine. But the propensity to go to the lengths he did — going so far as to miscontextualize science and medicine — to achieve his ideological goals is frightening. He might have overcome his opinions, but has he overcome this trait of personality and character? I doubt it.

I’m off the rest of the afternoon to write, write, write on book projects. So, I’m leaving you with some materials from the Herald-Leader and Courier-Journal’s coverage:

For updated coverage from the Herald-Leader’s Janet Patton, click here.

Both the Courier-Journal and Herald-Leader editorial pages have chimed in with revised opinions on Holsinger’s nomination.

The consensus: George W. Bush with his far-right ideological agenda is destroying the nation’s faith in even the most benign institutions of government, and it’s a shame that Dr. James W. Holsinger is caught in the middle of that, but that’s life.

From the Courier-Journal:

Double standards

Imagine somebody had testified under oath that Bill Clinton routinely muzzled the surgeon general — regularly blocked him from taking public positions more conservative than those of the administration.

Imagine that a surgeon general swore, on pain of perjury, that the Clinton bunch didn’t just try to suppress one report it didn’t like but regularly (1) told him to attend “political pep rallies,” (2) edited his speeches to remove ideas Bill and Hillary wouldn’t like, and (3) tried to turn major health reports into political documents, then squelched them when they couldn’t.

[...]

Imagine, in sum, discovering that the administration had turned the surgeon general’s office into a public relations outlet and the surgeon general himself into a political and ideological shill.

Well, that’s the story that finally came out, in former Surgeon General Richard Carmona’s testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this week. But Dr. Carmona was talking about George W. Bush, the man who appointed him, and not about Bill Clinton.

It’s the Bushies who tried to strong-arm him into being a spokesman for their policies on stem cell research, emergency contraception, sex education, prison health care and global warming.

[...]

From the Herald-Leader:

Surgeon general
Holsinger must show he won’t be puppet

You have to wonder if Dr. James Holsinger felt a certain chill as he listened, as we presume he did, to testimony of former U.S. surgeon generals this week.

Holsinger, who often displayed an admirable, if sometimes excessive, sense of his own rightness and independence as a public health official in Kentucky, today appears before a Senate panel as President Bush’s nominee for surgeon general.

On Tuesday, Dr. Richard Carmona, who left the post last year, testified that the Bush administration was partisan, malicious, vindicative and hostile in its heavy-handed meddling in the work of the office.

[...]

Can Holsinger hold off the political operatives who Carmona said wanted to insert three positive references to the administration on every pageof speeches delivered by the surgeon general?

Would he be willing to turn aside administration instructions to stiff the Special Olympics because it is associated with a family of prominent Democrats?

Holsinger must convince the Senate committee, and himself, that he can really be the nation’s doctor and not just the president’s puppet.

• James W. Holsinger , Surgeon General
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Matt Gunterman June 29th, 2007

Via Think Progress:

The confirmation hearing for Kentucky’s very own Dr. James W. Holsinger, the man who felt compelled to prop up his religious beliefs on a framework of pseudo-science, has been scheduled for July 12.

Place your bets on how this turns out. I say he goes down in flames. Why?

Well, the Democratic base — with all the digressive Supreme Court decisions handed down this week — got reminded how unfortunate Bush’s Christian fundamentalist nominees have been for the nation.

Holsinger’s willingness to inject pseudo-science into his religion doesn’t bode well that he understands the professional limits of faith and its proper influence on government policy that serves a diverse nation.

• James W. Holsinger , Surgeon General
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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.

• Anti-Science Agenda , Homophobia , James W. Holsinger , Surgeon General
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Matt Gunterman June 15th, 2007

Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report featured this hilarious commentary on the ludicrous nature of Dr. James W. Holsinger’s nomination to be the nation’s next surgeon general. The audience actually booed at the very mention of the possibility. Humor’s a great way to put things in perspective. Too bad Kentucky’s chattering class — which is lining up behind Holsinger — is too busy worrying about having a Kentuckian as surgeon general, rather than having a qualified doctor who can and will represent all Americans.

• James W. Holsinger , Surgeon General
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Matt Gunterman June 13th, 2007

It’s unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. Louisville Courier-Journal is an absolute love-fest for haters of gays lately. First, the paper publishes an emotive and irrational defense of homophobe Dr. James W. Holsinger’s nomination for surgeon general, and now this.

This blog has a lot of European and East Coast readers, and I’m simply embarrassed to highlight to them that the newspaper of our state’s largest city — the place you’d hope would be some sort of beacon of cosmopolitanism — would legitimize the following views by placing them on its editorial pages. It’s disheartening, really, to think how far we have to go just to get into the mainstream.

How long till we find the articulate white supremacist or anti-Semite defending his or her points of view with the Courier-Journal’s official sanction?

Let me tell you what is going to happen with this editorial: thousands of gay-haters across the commonwealth of Kentucky will grasp onto its contents for as long as they can to justify the continued social marginalization of gays and lesbians.

This Holsinger nomination is bringing out the visceral hatred of gays that lies just beneath the surface of the “elite” of Kentucky. To these “elites,” gays are fine, so long as they know their place and keep to it. But now that these gays might threaten the ascendancy of one of these “elites,” the gay-hating is fully unleashed.

Shame on you, Courier-Journal: you certainly are doing your part to relegate our fair commonwealth to the dregs of 21st-century churlishness. Congratulations.

Left Wants to Amputate Surgeon General Nominee

By J. Matt Barber
Special to The Courier-Journal

The Human Rights Campaign, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and a host of other radical homosexual activist and leftist organizations are decrying President Bush’s Surgeon General nominee, Dr. James Holsinger.

Dr. Holsinger, a conservative Methodist, has masters degrees from Asbury Theological Seminary and the University of South Carolina and earned his medical degree from Duke University. Dr. Holsinger previously served as Kentucky’s health secretary and was chancellor of the University of Kentucky’s medical center.

By all accounts, Dr. Holsinger is widely respected by his peers in the medical, academic and state government communities. But, nonetheless, Dr. Holsinger has come under tremendous fire from liberal activists for having the courage to address the compelling medical evidence and multiple studies which underscore the reality that homosexuals can escape the homosexual lifestyle and realign themselves to a biologically and spiritually natural heterosexual “orientation.” The irrefutable reality that thousands of former homosexuals have chosen to leave the “gay” lifestyle they once chose to enter only serves to further bolster — if not prove entirely — Dr. Holsinger’s advised medical assessment.

Much of the controversy revolves around a comprehensive compilation of medical studies Dr. Holsinger distilled titled, “The Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality.” In the study, Dr. Holsinger placed scientific substance over political correctness by unapologetically demonstrating the seemingly self evident reality that, from a medical standpoint, homosexual behaviors, such as male-on-male sodomy, are “unnatural” and “unhealthy” and run entirely counter to natural human biological design.

Wrote, Holsinger, “… From the perspective of pathology and pathophysiology, the varied sexual practices of homosexual men have resulted in a diverse and expanded concept of sexually transmitted disease and associated trauma.

“It is absolutely clear that anatomically and physiologically the alimentary (digestive) and reproductive systems in humans are separate organ systems. … Even primitive cultures understand the nature of waste elimination, sexual intercourse and the birth of children. Indeed our own children appear to ‘intuitively’ understand these facts.”

But facts and logic have a way of running counter to the left’s agenda, so we shouldn’t be at all surprised that there is such a liberal gnashing of teeth over Dr. Holsinger’s nomination. He’s clearly struck a chord on the issue of homosexual behavior and the homosexual lifestyle, and that chord rings sour with those who don’t want to hear it.

However, to their bitter discord, that chord does ring true. And when the light of truth, science and reality is shined upon the fantasy world of political correctness in which the left collectively resides, then they quickly scurry for the shadows of self-delusion and send out their most raucous and militant to dampen anything or anyone who might provide illumination.

Matt Barber is one of the “like-minded men” with Concerned Women for America. He is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law and serves as CWA’s policy director for cultural issues.

• Homophobia , James W. Holsinger , Surgeon General
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Matt Gunterman June 12th, 2007

Remember the 1990’s? Remember those halcyon days when a Democratic president led a short and successful war in the Balkans to stop a genocide? Only took him six months. Remember when the nation was so prosperous financially and culturally that it could afford to spend countless hours obsessing over the trivial matter of whether that president lied about receiving oral sex? Remember when we had a surgeon general, Dr. Jocelyn Elders, who got fired because she dared suggest that perhaps masturbation was a far safer sexual outlet for children than coitus? The crazy conservatives went foaming at the mouth at that one: Baby Jebus cries when little boys touch themselves!

Well, now the Bush administration has given us as its nominee for surgeon general: Kentucky’s very own Dr. James W. Holsinger — right-wing ideologue, major Republican financial donor, fundamentalist Christian, and anti-gay bigot. If confirmed, Holsinger would be the latest installment of Bush’s agenda to pack the ranks of the United States government with radical conservatives whose sole purpose is to advance the Republican party, and not the American people.

Think Progress has this post on Jocelyn Elders take on the appropriateness of Holsinger’s nomination:

Former Surgeon General has doubts about Holsinger.

Frank Lockwood of Bible Belt Blogger spoke with Dr. Jocelyn Elders, President Clinton’s first Surgeon General, who said that she is not sure that James Holsinger “is the person that we should be confirming” as the next Surgeon General:

LOCKWOOD — Do you think you’d vote to confirm him?

ELDERS — I think there’s some things he’s said that are out there. It would be very difficult for me to feel that this is the person that we should be confirming in this day and time with all the problem we have, related to sexual heath and all the problems we’re getting into. I think as the nation’s chief health educator we need to know what he would do to help America evolve into a sexually healthy nation. We’re a sexually unhealthy nation.

• James W. Holsinger , Surgeon General
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Matt Gunterman June 10th, 2007

Some interesting excerpts from a piece by Andrew Wolfson in today’s Courier-Journal on Dr. James Holsinger, the Bush administration’s homophobic nominee for surgeon general.

What’s clear is that this nomination must be opposed and ultimately defeated to keep the Bush administration from further inserting out-of-the-mainstream conservative ideologues into every nook and cranny of the American government.

My favorite bit from this piece? The quote from the spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services who says that scientific understanding of sexuality has deepened from 1991 when Holsinger was writing about sex organs as pipe fittings. Deepening: gotta love it.

Holsinger assailed, defended over views on gays
Kentuckian tapped to be surgeon general

Gay-rights activists have denounced the University of Kentucky doctor nominated for U.S. surgeon general as an “anti-gay quack” who they fear would use the office as “a bully pulpit for hatred.”

And two U.S. senators who will judge his nomination — Barack Obama and Christopher Dodd — criticized Dr. James Holsinger’s nomination, citing views he has expressed about gays as a national leader of the United Methodist Church.

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Gay-rights organizations, including the Log Cabin Republicans, have called for the Senate to reject President Bush’s nomination of Holsinger as surgeon general, citing a paper he wrote for the Methodist Church 16 years ago describing male homosexual sex as unnatural and unhealthy.

They also denounced his more recent votes, as a member of the church’s Judicial Council, opposing a decision to allow a lesbian to be a pastor and supporting another pastor who refused to let an openly gay man join the church.

“Why select somebody who follows an ideology that flies in the face of science?” asked Christina Gilgor, executive director of the Kentucky Fairness Alliance.

In a statement, Sen. Obama, of Illinois, said he has “serious reservations about nominating someone who would inject his own anti-gay ideology into critical decisions about the health and well-being of our nation.”

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Holsinger is a registered Republican who over the past 10 years has given about $23,000 to the GOP and its candidates, including $3,000 to President Bush.

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Some scientific experts have criticized Holsinger for the paper he wrote in 1991 as a member of the United Methodist Church’s Committee to Study Homosexuality, in which he equated homosexuality with disease.

Titled “Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality,” the paper says that male and female sex organs, like pipe fittings, are designed for each other, and when “the complementarity of the sexes is breached, injuries and diseases may occur.”

In an interview, Dr. June Reinisch, director emeritus of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender & Reproduction, said Holsinger’s paper was inaccurate when it was written and “presents a totally distorted view of homosexuality.

“Homosexuality is not about where you place your genitals — it has to do with the love and attraction and interaction between human beings,” she said. “It is quite clear he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Christina Pearson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the office of the surgeon general, said the paper was “based on information available at the time” and that “since then, the science has deepened.”

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Yet other Methodists say Holsinger has been involved in decisions by the Judicial Council — the church’s Supreme Court — that have divided the church and its members.

While the United Methodist Church’s official Book of Discipline says it “does not condone the practice of homosexuality” and considers it “incompatible with Christian teaching,” it implores families and the church “not to reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends.”

The Rev. Troy Plummer, executive director of the Chicago-based Reconciling Ministries Network of United Methodists, said Holsinger has done just that.

“When he has been called to … offer the hand of Christian fellowship, he has slammed the door in the face of faithful gay and lesbian persons,” said Plummer, whose group promotes sexual diversity in the church. “What, then, might he do as surgeon general?”

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• James W. Holsinger , Surgeon General
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