AIDS Action has become the first national organization to oppose the nomination of James W. Holsinger, Jr., to be Surgeon General of the United States. Other organizations are sifting through the public record in order to shape their own position.
'We are extremely disappointed with this nomination and we will be writing to Senators [ Ted ] Kennedy, D-Mass., and [ Mike ] Enzi, R-Wyo., the chairman and ranking member of the committee, opposing the nomination,' said Ronald Johnson in an exclusive interview. He is deputy director of AIDS Action, the Washington voice of local AIDS organizations.
'We feel this is another distressing signal and message that this administration; this President does not either understand or take seriously the domestic epidemic. To appoint someone who has a track record of being anti-gay is just not acceptable,' he said. He pointed out that the HIV epidemic in the United States continues to disproportionately affect gay men.
Surgeons General C. Everett Koop, David Thatcher and Jocelyn Elders all played prominent roles in responding to HIV in earlier administrations. Johnson said the next surgeon general must continue that tradition. The position has been filled on an acting basis since last summer.
Unlike most appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president, the surgeon general serves a fixed four-year term. George W. Bush nominated Holsinger on May 24, on a Thursday afternoon prior to a long holiday weekend that marks the unofficial start of the summer vacation season. That timing gimmick often is used to minimize media attention.
On paper, he is eminently suitable for the position of chief public health officer: a medical degree from Duke University; a master's in hospital financial management from the University of South Carolina; a 25-year career with the Veterans Administration, rising to a senior management position; and subsequent work at the University of Kentucky and the state health care system.
However, Holsinger has had a long parallel career as an anti-gay zealot within the upper echelon of the Methodist church. ( See the following article. )
Soulforce Lexington, Ky., coordinator Jamie McDaniel said that Holsinger 'has demonstrated in the past that he harbors religious-based prejudice towards homosexuals. As a gay American, I am deeply concerned over any surgeon general nominee not being healed of such personal prejudice,' he told the Lexington Herald-Leader.
That prompted minions of Focus on the Family to play the victim card. 'Man of faith is under fire for biblical stance on homosexuality,' said a headline written by Jennifer Mesko, an editor at CitizenLink.com . The far right is claiming that this has become a religious test for public office.
'Holsinger is an ideologue whose medical views on gay and lesbian people resemble sorcery more than sound science,' said Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, a group that debunks the antigay religious right. 'It is clear that James Holsinger is to medicine what Alberto Gonzales is to justice.'
A lively exchange on the nominee has sprung up on the 'Bible Belt Blogger' run by Arkansas Democrat-Gazette religion editor Frank Lockwood.
As poster Caleb Powers summarized, 'Although a couple of Holsinger's supporters have blogged here that he is not an opponent of equal rights for gays and lesbians, no one has said that he's in favor of equality, either.'
'That's the problem. We simply can't have a surgeon general who believes that any group of citizens is second rate. And when you don't even want these folks to kneel down and pray in the same church as you, well, that's pretty telling.'
'The health disparities experienced by the LGBT community should not be forgotten when one is speaking about how differential access, prejudice and ignorance often lead to poorer health outcomes for other groups in the U.S.,' said David Haltiwanger, cochair of the National Coalition for LGBT Health.
David Fouse, communications director for the American Association of Public Health, said they are reviewing the nomination and have not yet taken a position on it.
Christine Lubinsky, executive director of the HIV Medicine Association, responded similarly.
Joel Ginsberg, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, said, 'We can only hope that as the country's top health official Dr Holsinger would rely on scientific data and not church doctrine. The Senate should take a hard look to make sure he isn't another in a long line of ideologically-driven Bush Administration nominees.'
The Senate committee that will review the nomination is chaired by Ted Kennedy. Its members include presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Christopher Dodd. Should he be confirmed, Holsinger would serve into the third year of the next president's term.
Holsinger's Anti-Gay Religious Record
by Bob Roehr
James Holsinger's professional career has been as a medical provider and administrator, but he also has had a parallel volunteer career among the topmost reaches of the 'Confessing Movement,' a neo-evangelical effort within the United Methodist Church to return it to theological orthodoxy. Opposition to a growing tolerance and even acceptance of gays within the church has been one of their principle fixations.
He has served as a trustee of the conservative Asbury Theological Seminary since 1990 and was granted a master's degree in biblical studies in 2004.
Holsinger was appointed to the church's Committee to Study Homosexuality. But he quite in February 1991, according to Time magazine, 'because he felt certain its conclusions would follow liberal lines.' He warned that accepting gays would drive millions away from the church.
At the United Methodist General Conference in 1996, 15 of the more than 90 bishops present released a statement expressing their personal 'pain' at 'prosecutions…against gay and lesbian persons' within the church.
Holsinger told the United Methodist News Service, ''The careful orchestration' of the conference by the 15 bishops 'cast a pall across the' conference, 'which did not lift, even after its adjournment.''
In 1998, the Confessing Movement expressed 'disappointment and consternation that a technicality has been used to acquit the Rev. Jimmy Creech of the charges against him for performing a same-sex union.' The jury came up one vote shy of the nine-vote supermajority needed for conviction.
'Classical biblical Christians in the Wesleyan tradition, within the United Methodist Church, have been long-suffering and patient in facing the repeated attempts of the radical homosexual/lesbian lobby to force the Church and the General Conference to grant approval to the practice of homosexuality and of homosexual unions…We believe that it threatens the connection and the ties that bind us together in worship and ministry,' it wrote.
Holsinger was one of 18 members of the board of directors of the Confessing Movement at the time the statement was issued.
He won election to the nine-member Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church. In May 2004, he was on the losing side when the Council decided it did not have the authority to hear an appeal of a lower court that allowed a lesbian minister to continue to serve her parish.
Later that same year, Holsinger was part of the majority that removed the openly lesbian Rev. Irene 'Beth' Stroud from her church in Philadelphia. The Council ruled, 'Since the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching, self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be accepted as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve in the United Methodist Church.'
Holsinger also helped to establish the Hope Springs Community Church, in Lexington, Kentucky, where he resides. Among the programs operated by that church is an 'ex-gay' ministry. 'We see that as an issue not of orientation but of lifestyle,' pastor David Calhoun told the Herald-Leader. 'We have people who seek to walk out of that lifestyle.'