Surgeon Gen. nominee: Homosexuality Isn't Natural or Healthy

"Homosexuality Isn't Natural or Healthy"
By Jake Tapper
ABCNews
Wednesday 06 June 2007

Bush's choice for top doc compared human genitalia to pipe fittings; said homosexual practices can cause injury or death.

President Bush's nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. James W. Holsinger, wrote a paper in 1991 that purported to make the medical argument that homosexuality is unnatural and unhealthy.

Holsinger, 68, presented "The Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality" in January 1991 to a United Methodist Church's committee to study homosexuality. 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.

Noting that Holsinger also belongs to a church that offers a ministry to "cure" gays of the sexual orientation, gay and lesbian rights advocates immediately protested Holsinger's nomination. "His writings suggest a scientific view rooted in anti-gay beliefs that are incompatible with the job of serving the medical health of all Americans," said the Human Rights Campaign in a statement. "It is essential that America's top doctor value sound science over anti-gay ideology."

Neither Holsinger, a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health, nor the White House returned calls for comment. When announcing his nomination on May 24, President Bush said that as "America's chief health educator, (Dr. Holsinger) 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."

Holsinger's paper argued that male and female genitalia are complimentary - so much so "that it has entered our vocabulary in the form of naming pipe fittings either the male fitting or the female fitting depending upon which one interlocks within the other." Body parts used for gay sex are not complimentary, he wrote, and "When the complementarity of the sexes is breached, injuries and diseases may occur."

Holsinger wrote that "(a)natomically the vagina is designed to receive the penis" while the anus and rectum - which "contain no natural lubricating function" - are not. "The rectum is incapable of mechanical protection against abrasion and severe damage ...can result if objects that are large, sharp, or pointed are inserted into the rectum," Holsinger wrote.

The cardiologist details many different diseases gay men can catch, and several sexual practices they may engage in, including "anal eroticism" which can lead to injuries and even death. "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..."

In the context of the larger argument in his church as to whether homosexuality should be accepted, Holsinger presented the medical and scientific argument that anal intercourse was not natural. "It is absolutely clear that anatomically and physiological the alimentary and reproductive systems in humans are separate organ systems; i.e., the human does not have a cloaca," he said, referring to the posterior orifice that serves as the one opening for genital, urinary and intestinal tracts in amphibians, birds, and reptiles. The Surgeon General nominee writes 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."

The US Senate confirmation hearings for Holsinger, which will proceed through the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee, chaired by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., have not been scheduled. Kennedy's office did not offer a comment on the burgeoning controversy.

Holsinger holds a doctorate in anatomy and physiology and an M.D. from Duke University, and spent much of his career working for the Veteran's Health Administration. From 2003 to 2005 he was Kentucky's secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services.