President Bush recently nominated James W. Holsinger to become the next Surgeon General of the United States:
As America’s chief health educator, he will be charged with providing the best scientific information available on how Americans can make smart choices that improve their health and reduce their risk of illness and injury. … I am confident that Dr. Holsinger will help our Nation confront this challenge and many others to ensure that Americans live longer, better, and healthier lives.
It is doubtful that Holsinger is the person most fit to be America’s doctor and provide the public with “the best scientific information available.” As ThinkProgress noted last week, Holsinger has a long history of prejudice against gays and lesbians, including founding a church that “ministers to people who no longer wish to be gay or lesbian.”
In 1991, Holsinger wrote a document titled “Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality” for the United Methodist Church’s Committee to Study Homosexuality. The graphic document argues that gay sex can lead to “lacerations, perforations and deaths” and concludes that it is “intuitively” unnatural:
It is absolutely clear that anatomically and physiologically the alimentary and reproductive systems in humans are separate organ systems; i.e., the human does not have a cloaca. Likewise it is clear that 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. I think we should note that these simple “scientific facts are the same in any culture — patriarchal or matriarchal, modern or primitive, Jewish or gentile, etc. The anatomic and physiologic facts of alimentation and reproduction simply do not change based on any cultural setting. In fact, the logical complementarity of the human sexes has been so recognized in our culture that it has entered our vocabulary in the form of naming various pipe fittings either the male fitting or the female fitting depending upon which one interlocks within the other. When the complementarity of the sexes is breached, injuries and diseases may occur as noted above.
Therefore, based on the simplest known anatomy and physiology, when dealing with the complementarity of the human sexes, one can simply say, Res ipsa loquitur — the thing speaks for itself!
Holsinger resigned from the committee in the early 1990s “because he believed the committee ‘would follow liberal lines.’” He also warned “that acceptance of homosexuality would drive away millions of churchgoers.”
Read the full document HERE.
UPDATE: Pam’s House Blend has more.