Meet Bush’s new Surgeon General

June 2, 2007

I vaguely recall a time when Surgeon General was a big deal. C. Everett Koop became a prominent national figure in the 1980s, and seemed to take the position from honorary title to leading public health official.

Other than Joycelyn Elders, who gained unwelcome notoriety, the position hasn’t garnered much attention since. Quick: name the last Surgeon General. If you said, “Richard Carmona,” give yourself a prize. If you know that Kenneth Moritsugu has been the acting Surgeon General for the last year, you’re probably either a relative or an employee of Dr. Moritsugu.

However, with Bush’s new nominee for the job, James Holsinger, we’re probably going to hear quite a bit more about the position.

[Holsinger and his wife] founded Hope Springs Community Church in a warehouse at 1109 Versailles Road. Calhoun called it a socially diverse congregation with a “very vital recovery ministry.” It serves the homeless and those with addictions to drugs, alcohol and sex; and it has a Spanish-language Hispanic congregation with its own pastor. […]

Hope Springs also ministers to people who no longer wish to be gay or lesbian, Calhoun said.

“We see that as an issue not of orientation but of lifestyle,” he said. “We have people who seek to walk out of that lifestyle.”

Holsinger, in his capacity as a high-ranking official in the United Methodist Church, also opposed allowing a lesbian to be an associate pastor, and backed another pastor who refused to let a gay man join his church.

The Surgeon General needs Senate confirmation. Expect interesting hearings.

Oh, fuck no.

Expect interesting hearings.

Expect massive protests. Expect tar and feathers.

What the FUCK?

I just hope some embarrassing details about Holeslinger’s “lifestyle” emerge.

  • Surgeon General Warning: Being gay, leading a gay lifestyle, thinking gay, acting gay or supporting gays and lesbians can be detrimental to your afterlife. God’s punishments can be severe. Giving up this lifestyle and accepting Jesus is your only hope.

    Ignorance, arogance and intolerance are okay, though. God bless.

  • The Bush administration specializes in placing unqualified persons in high-level positions. What legacy does George W. Bush hope to attain except for being the worst, incompetent president in history with equally incompetent, unqualified cabinet secretaries? Totally pathetic (especially since he’s so proud of being president)!! Totally unbelievable, as well!!

  • I don’t know why this surprises anyone – it’s perfectly in keeping with the way things work in Backwards World. When it has come to appointing people to head departments and agencies and initiatives on everything from consumer safety to the environment to energy to clean air to civil rights to justice to health care and science Bush has chosen those who are the antithesis of what you would normally expect, and who have made it their life’s mission to work against consumers, against recognized and accepted science, or who have worked to pave the way for the corporations to ride roughshod over us on their way to making record profits. The good work that government can do is systematically being shredded, while it is being promoted and encouraged to insert itself into our personal and private lives.

    Does Bush actually think this guy will make it through hearings, or is this just another bone with a little meat on it that he has thrown to a segment of the base that believes in the same kinds of things this guy does?

  • Expect interesting hearings.

    Do you believe dinosaurs cavorted with humans on the Ark?

    CB:

    A long time ago you wrote a post claiming that BushCo had given only lip service to their Christian base.

    Good(ling) Heavens Man!
    Are you ready to pull the plug on that?
    Or do you need another supremely Inferior Justice to realize we are being Talibanized?

  • Anne, @4, is right (as usual). In BushWorld®, it’s the standard operating procedure: have a chicken coop to guard? Look for a fox; he knows all about chickens.

  • No major professional organization of psychologists or psychiatrists endorses attempts to “cure” people of homosexuality. According to the American Psychological Association ‘s website, “The American Psychological Association is concerned about such therapies and their potential harm to patients….Any person who enters into therapy to deal with issues of sexual orientation has a right to expect that such therapy would take place in a professionally neutral environment absent of any social bias.”

    On its website, the American Psychiatric Association says that reparative or conversion therapies “are at odds with the scientific position of the American Psychiatric Association which has maintained, since 1973, that homosexuality per se, is not a mental disorder.”

    According to the American Psychiatric Association’s web site, reparative or conversion therapies have been opposed or criticized by organizations including :
    * the American Academy of Pediatrics
    * the American Medical Association
    * the American Psychological Association
    * The American Counseling Association
    * the National Association of Social Workers.

  • ***The Surgeon General needs Senate confirmation. Expect interesting hearings. ***

    Actually, I’ll be expecting either (1) a recess appointment, or (2) seeing HolocaustSinger withdraw from the nomination and then make lots of money on the “I’m Perrrrrrrseeeeeecuuuuuuuuuted!” talk circuit. He’s good for at least three skunky Becks, a half-dozen Limburgers, and three full weeks of Shill O’RumpRoast.

    Is the guy even a real physician?

  • So is the grinning little (me, no worries) shrub insane or just ignorant?

  • Is the guy even a real physician?

    Yep. A cardiologist.

    CB, you have a typo – It’s James Holsinger, not Joseph. Were you thinking of Leo Ryan’s aide? Not that his Jimmy’s creepy little church should make a person think of the other James who ran a church.

    Actually, I can’t find any mention of the Holsingers on the web page for the church. Not that it means anything!

  • Holsinger’s beliefs are incompatible with what the beliefs of a Surgeon General should be. Let’s hope the Dems have a spine and say NO.

    And speaking of Dr. Joycelyn Elders, I just heard her speak this weekend at the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health conference. My favorite quote was when she addressed the issue of “abstinence only” education. She noted that the argument most often used by advocates of abstinence only education is that condoms break. Her response was: “Yes, condoms break — but the vows of chastity break far more easily.”

    BAC

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