The United States Department of Health and Human Services states the Surgeon General is "America's chief health educator, giving Americans the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce the risk of illness and injury."
Let's take a look at the "scientific information" President Bush's nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. James W. Holsinger, uses for his medical views on homosexuality...
Dr. Holsinger is a University of Kentucky professor and a member of the United Methodist Judicial Council, the denomination’s "supreme court."
In his role on the United Methodist Judicial Council, Holsinger opposed a decision to allow a lesbian to be an associate pastor, and he supported a pastor who would not permit an openly gay man to join the church. As member of the Committee to Study Homosexuality in the United Methodist Church, Holsinger authored a 1991 paper titled "Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality," which essentially equates homosexuality with disease in lurid terms.
"Like male and female pipe fittings, certain male and female body parts are designed for each other," Holsinger wrote in a paper prepared for a United Methodist Church committee studying homosexuality.
A Lexington church that Holsinger helped found, Hope Springs Community Church, has a ministry dedicated to helping gay people who want to become heterosexual.
Statement by the Rev. Troy Plummer,
Executive Director of Reconciling Ministries Network of United Methodists
and National Religious Leadership Roundtable Member
"For the last 20 years, James Holsinger has been the worst kind of bully inside the United Methodist Church. As a member of a sexuality study team in 1991, he used his position as a medical doctor to promote skewed and inaccurate information regarding gay men. As the chair of the Judicial Council, the ‘supreme court’ of the United Methodist Church, he has used his power to disregard the Constitution of the Methodist Church and block from membership faithful gay and lesbian Christians. As a pastor, he has promoted ‘reparative therapy’ — a practice that is nothing short of torture of gay and lesbian people and is not condoned by any professional psychological association; in fact, many call it medical malpractice.
"What, then, might he do as surgeon general? As the primary medical educator of our nation, I have no faith that Holsinger would refrain from these practices which are unscientific at best and torturous at worst. When Holsinger’s ‘all’ does not mean ‘all’ in the Methodist Church, can it mean all for American citizens? What kind of education from the surgeon general could gay and lesbian families expect? What could bisexual and transgender people expect?
"As a psychotherapist, a pastor and an American citizen myself, I can only hope that James Holsinger will not be given the opportunity to use the office of the surgeon general as a bully pulpit for hatred."
Christina Gilgor, director of the Kentucky Fairness Alliance, a gay rights group says Holsinger "rejects science and promotes ideology."
Holsinger, 68, has declined all interview requests, and the White House had no immediate comment Wednesday.
- Disregard the Constitution
- Torture
- Ideology
- Hatred
Sounds like a perfect Bush nominee!
ACT NOW TO STOP THIS NOMINATION!
Call your Senators TODAY and demand they vote NO on the nomination of James Holsinger.
Call the office of the Vice President and ask them how they feel about Holsinger's views and if they are consistent with the views of Dick and Lynne Cheney.